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ESSAYS IN LIBERALISM 



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ESSAYS IN LIBERALISM 



BY 

SIX OXFORD MEN 



This is true Liberty, when freeborn men, 
Having to advise the public, may speak free : 
Which he who can and will deserves high praise : 
Who neither can nor will may hold his peace. 
What can be juster in a state than this ? 

Milton^ after Euripides 



CASSELL AND COMPANY, Limited 

LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE 
1897 



ALL RIGHTS RESEUVKD 



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JOHN MORLEY 



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PREFACE. 



In these days, when books multiply and men decay, - 
it becomes more than ever the duty of editors to 
provide some apology for the appearance of a new 
volume. Since, however, the vogue of the historical 
school and of popular science makes explanation 
consist in a r^stwtS of the origin rather than a 
defence of the end, our task is considerably lightened. 
The writers of these Essays were drawn together in 
the political debates and the contested elections of 
the Oxford Union Society. To that society, and to 
the stimulating discussions of the Palmerston and 
Russell Clubs, we owe a common debt of gratitude. 
Six years ago Undergraduate Oxford tended to be j 
Tory or Socialist : since that time we have seen an 
extraordinarily strong Liberal movement absorb, 
with one or two remarkaye exceptions, most of 
those who care for political discussions or debates. 

So far as the causes are personal, Mr. Belloc has 
been the leading spirit ; and we cannot refrain from J 
gratefully expressing our admiration for his kindiing 



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viii Essays in Liberalism. 

eloquence, his Liberal enthusiasm, and his practical 
idealism. Much that he has not written is indirectly 
derived from him, inspired by a companionship which 
we have all found a liberal education. 

The general purpose of a book of youthful essays 
must be rather a confession of faith than a discussion 
of opinions ; and the virtue expected will be rather 
freshness of conviction than ripeness of thought. The 
special aim of this book was the statement of a few 
definite principles applied to various departments of 
politics. Finality, exhaustiveness, the detailed know- 
ledge of the expert : these are merits we have hardly 
attempted to realise. But if we have not succeeded 
in conveying that these two covers contain the work 
of six men who know their own minds, and have, 
not perhaps a formed opinion on every topic of public 
affairs, but at least some principle to determine the 
lines of an opinion, then we have failed of our object. 
It would be presumptuous to lay claim to the prime 
virtue of lucidity, but we may boldly affirm that these 
papers are precise and outspoken. Views definitely 
presented may be wrong and foolish ; but views 
tentatively hinted under temporising reservations 
and concessions are, even if free from positive error, 
too unreal and unsubstantial to be called effectively 
right We prefer to fail or to succeed in frank black 



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Preface, ix 

and white rather than to shilly-shally in colourless 
neutrality. Further, it was difficult to write of the 
moment and not to find that we had written for the 
moment Details falsify themselves between the pen 
and the press ; but principles cannot be declared in 
skeleton abstraction. We have endeavoured to give 
some warmth and colour of actuality without con- 
demning the work to become petty and ephemeral. 
In the Essay on Outward Relations the difficulty was 
especially pressing : but why correct January up to 
date to fit March, when April will probably leave 
both untrue or obsolete } 

If this little book be found to deserve any praise 
its value will consist in the attempt not only to 
realise present forces and conditions in politics, but 
to get back to principles which stand to prove them- 
selves the master forces in the future as they have done 
in the past. These Essays are dictated by the con-" 
viction that there has been ot late too much neglect 
of principle, that the party is lost in detail, and that 
it is useless to put before the country long pro- 
grammes and minute schemes of particular legislation. 

But unless the country knows what general line 
measures will take, it will never give a mandate to 
the party of reform. 

What, then, are the common principles which 



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X Essays in Liberalism. 

ramify into these six widely divergent branches? 
They can be briefly summarised : Democracy actual- 
ised up to the full meaning of Bentham's formula ; 
a degree of political idealism ; and a third article 
intimately bound up with this last, a resolute oppo- 
sition to the form under which the materialist attacks 
the State — Socialism. And here we may quote some 
words of encouragement written by Mr. Gladstone, 
on January 2nd of this year, to one of the essayists : — 
" I venture on assuring you that I regard the design 
formed by you and your friends with sincere interest, 
and in particular wish well to all the efforts you may 
make on behalf of individual freedom and independ- 
ence as opposed to what is termed Collectivism." 

The first Essay, the most general in scope, lays 
special stress on the great truth that the desire for 
property is natural and ineradicable; and that the 
artificial causes which prevent the greater distri- 
bution of landed property — that ideal accompani- 
ment of citizenship— should be swept away by a 
great measure of reform. 

The second Essay attempts to justify the past 
impositions of Liberal principles on economic con- 
ditions, and outlines the commercial policy of the 
future. The application of a somewhat new distinction 
in monopolies to the problem of municipal enterprise 



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Preface. xi 

brings the Liberal position with regard to the exten- 
sion of State industry into clear relief. 

In "Liberals and Labour" we pass from mainly 
economic to mainly moral considerations. Free play 
is the one thing needful for labour. But free play 
implies fair play, and can only be under law. The 
main point of the Essay is therefore to define the 
" compromise " between licence and limitation, under 
which the desired goal will best be attained. 

** Liberalism in Outward Relations " develops the 
veneration for national sentiments and national self- 
government which has always inspired the party, 
and appeals above all for a democratizing of foreign 
policy as a substitute for traditional obscurantism. 

Foreign policy is followed by Education. In that 
subject the history of a sectarian monopoly exposes 
the hoUowness of the present Conservative attitude. 
Present events emphasise the need for a constructive 
Liberal policy, and lend an interest to the indications 
here given. 

In the last Essay the threads are drawn together, 
and the Liberal doctrines, which are ideally correlated 
at the outset by Mr. Belloc, are reviewed in the tangible 
but tangled frame of history by Mr. Macdonell. 

Principles would not be worthily large which did 
not allow an honest freedom to differ in detail. Not 



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xii Essays in Liberalism, 

one of these Essays, probably, but contains opinions, 
phrases, obiter dicta, interpretations of examples, 
which the other contributors reject entirely, or accept 
only with modifications. We have made no attempt 
to reduce the parts of the work to a mechanical 
unison, confident that general conformity of attitude 
and harmony of inspiration will be sufficiently appa- 
rent. Indeed, our essential agreement is proved by 
the willingness of each to stand in juxtaposition with 
subordinate beliefs which he considers doubtful, mis- 
taken, or even absurd : it is the humble microcosm of 
party loyalty. 

One point more : only a great literary artist can 
be sure that he can so present the past that the whole 
is scientifically indicated ; only a triumph of style can 
effect that from what you say of A your judgment 
on hypothetical B and C can strictly be foretold. 
Such success could not be hoped for in a work of 
independent contributions. We could not cover the 
whole field of politics to treat every article in the 
party creed and pronounce upon every question in 
the party problem. We hope the general position is 
fairly defined ; hints scattered up and down may 
help to complete some subsidiary lines. The points 
in the figure which are, perhaps, least precisely in- 
dicated are the burning questions of the House of 



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Preface, 



Xlll 



Lords, the Liquor Traffic, and Disestablishment In 

so far as definition of an attitude on these matters is 

wanting, we are not without hope that possibly in the 

future Essays on these subjects might be added to 

the present collection. 

J. S. P. 

F.W.H. 
Oxford, March ist, 1897. 



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CONTENTS. 



fAGB 

THE LIBERAL TRADITION i 

By HiLAiRE Belloc, late Scholar o/Balliol College^ Oxford. 



LIBERALISM AND WEALTH 31 

By Francis W. Hirst, late Scholar of Wadham College, 
Oxford. 

LIBERALS AND LABOUR 97 

By J. Allsebrook Simon, lale Scholar of Wadham College, 
Oxford. 

LIBERALISM IN OUTWARD RELATIONS . .131 

By J. S. Phillimore, Student of Christ Church, Oxford. 

A LIBERAL VIEW OF EDUCATION . .175 

By J. Lawrence Hammond, late Scholar of St. John's 
College, Oxford. 

THE HISTORIC BASIS OF LIBERALISM . .219 

By P. J. Macoonell late Scholar of Brasenose College, 
Oxford. 

INDEX 277 



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ESSAYS IN LIBERALISM. 



THE LIBERAL TRADITION. 

A Civic Ideal — Now imperilled by Liberal Defeat — A graver Symptom — 
Possibility of Reversion to old and simpler Principles — Rival 
Political Theories — That of mere Conquest— Collectivist Attack on 
Personal Thrift and Property — Socialism, like Jingoism, strong 
because simple — The Moral to be drawn — Recall the Liberal 
Principle—The Liberal Citizen — His Economic and Political In- 
dependence and Responsibility — The Early Liberals — Their demand 
for the Suffrage and Repeal of Corn Laws— Social Reform — Abroad : 
their S3rmpathy with National Movements — Home Rule — Extension 
of Suffrage — Citizenship— The Land Monopoly : their Attempt, and 
our Failure to follow it up— The Plural Vote : another Failure — The 
House of Lords: Home Rule Bill a Test Case — How the Old 
Liberals would have conducted the Campaign against the Lords— 
Our late Policy another Proof of Abandonment of Principle for Detail 
— Decay of Political Idealism one Cause of our Defeat — Partial 
Disillusions — Free Trade — The Suffrage — Local Self-Govemment — 
Similar Victories of Liberalism on the Continent still less Successful 
— Consequent Wisdom of the Vulgar — How to revive Idealism — 
The Power of Conviction — Social and Economic Changes of the 
Century — Liberal Tradition — Land — The Task Neglected ^ Our 
Faults and their Punishment — Conditions still favouring Reform 
of the Land Laws — The Three Obstacles : Entail, Conveyancing, 
Landlords* Policy — The Industrial Future. 

THERE existed in the minds of those who 
brought about the p olitical revolu tjon of our 
^ 1 century a c ertain civic i deal ^sdlich_fQrInc.d -the basis 
I o f all their publj c^ctipn. 

It was simple and clear, as must be all first prin- 
ciples, and especially those which are to command 
B 



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2 7/^^ Liberal Tradition. 

general conviction or to create an enthusiasm that 
shall be deep and sustained. It was applicable to 
all the conditions of a State, because it dealt with 
the most fundamental definitions of civic rights 
and civic duties; and, moreover, at the moment 
when its vigorous exponents opened the battle which 
their successors are so near to losing, the trend of 
events appeared to be ranged upon their side. 

That ideal now stands in the greatest peril. The 

ir ^' .^ political party which has always been its guardian 
has sustained an overwhelming defeat at the polls. 

^^ ''..:* J The need of maintaining the central idea, already 
^ sufficiently obscured by a mass of irrelevant ex- 
cursions, is now hardly mentioned; its most im- 
portant positive applications are avoided in a debate 
. f that is lapsing into mere criticism, and that criticism 

largely personal. Conviction itself has been a great 
deal more than shaken by a spirit of compromise 
which is no longer the statesmanlike desire to pre- 
serve unity between slightly varying parts, but has 
become a blind attempt to find something in common 
between highly differing and even antagonistic in- 
terests. For compromise — ^which, used as a side- 
method, is a condition of political success — becomes, 
when it is raised to the dignity of a main principle, 
the immediate cause of disintegration and failure; 
There is in the defeat of Liberalism this yet 
r graver symptom. The party has refused or been 
unable to say what solution it proposed for the new 






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Back to Principle. 3 

problems which new conditions have produced. The 
political ideal, who^ main function should be to 
mould the material obstacles in its path until they 
become food for its own continuance, has been 
allowed to remain unused while these obstacles have 
grown unchecked in the rapid material changes about 
us till the disproportion between the old moral 
forces available for Liberal reform and the new 
economio conditions opposing them has created a 
kind of despair. 

Is it possible to revert at this hour to the simple 
doctrines which formed the strength of our first 
leaders ? Most undoubtedly it is. The tradition of 
these ideas still survives ; they are understood by 
great masses of the electorate ; they are even used, 
upon occasion, as tests of what the attitude of a 
voter should be upon some particular question. It 
remains to the party to give the initiative ; to deter- 
mine the times and the places of particular applica- 
tion ; to concentrate upon this or that point of 
importance. But, above all, it is the function of 
the party to keep clearly before itself and before 
the electorate the principles that gave it its name, 
and the inheritance of which it is the warden. If 
the party forgets the basis of its political history, 
neglects the opportunities of action, or attempts to 
abandon some fundamental attitude in politics at 
the bidding of a material interest, it will disappear. 

There are in opposition to it many clear and 
B Z 



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4 The Liberal Tradition. 

well-defined theories, capable of inspiring an equal 
enthusiasm and conviction, and possessing a most 
valuable kind of support — I mean that depending 
upon the prediction of probable future develop- 
ments. 

We have, alien to us, probably antagonistic to 
V us, a dream of mere conquest apart from honour 
and of the glory of mere empire, separate from 
self-respecting power. It has proved fatal before 
now to Liberal institutions, and attenuated though 
it is, ridiculous so far as its chief actors are con- 
cerned, and beneath contempt in its mode of ex- 
pression, it still possesses all the characteristics of 
a sentiment likely to grow in strength, and find 
more and more material for its' increase ; and it is a 
sentiment which, at a certain shameful moment, 
found innumerable supporters among the electorate 
of England. 
'^ There is, again, a theory in economics and politics 
directly the opposite of our own, cutting at the 
root of our most obvious principles ; and it is grow- 
ing daily. It involves an' attack upon personal 
production, personal accumulation, and consequent 
personal possession: a theory. JKhich jmakes^the in- 
K dividual and all the individual virtues ^f sm all 
adcount and desires to emphasise rather the vague 
qualities of a State. 

It would dissolve thrift, and self-control, and 
the personal honour which keeps a contract sacred, 



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Jingoism and Socialism. 5 

and replace them by a State reserve, by State con- 
trol, and by a State system, releasing men from the 
burden of private rectitude. It is a theory which is 
absolutely certain to find stronger and stronger 
support as our economic system develops, unless 
it is met by an unflinching adherence to those 
older political principles which have strength left in 
them to shape the economic system itself. Though 
it will be dealt with later in this essay, it is worthy 
of consideration for a moment in these introductory 
sentences, because it forms so admirable an example 
of those clear hypotheses that frequently succeed in 
transforming the politics of a nation. 

This new theory is simple, consistent, and 
strong. Just as the Jingo finds a substantial sup- 
port in the actual facts of empire and in the con- 
tinued immunity awarded to broken pledges and 
to unprovoked attacks, so the Socialist finds his sup- 
port in the actual facts of the present system of 
economics, in the divorce of personality from produc- 
tion, and in the partial achievement of that centrali- 
sation of capital which is his goal. He has upon his 
side all the potential force of a majority which has 
forgotten what property means, and even of a con- 
siderable minority so used to great accumulations as 
to have equally lost the personal sentiment of attach- 
ment in regard to it He has the additional strength 
of morally occupying the defensive, saying, " Here 
is the present system, large capital in few units 



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6 The Liberal Tradition, 

employing many wage-earners. I believe it cannot 
be fundamentally changed, yet by removing a merely 
sentimental factor which does not concern the wealth 
itself, I shall be able to use that wealth to far greater 
advantage for the community." 

Is not this theory, with its rigid conclusions, its 

\ obvious postulates, and its material surroundings, 

,^ precisely such as must command, when once it has 

penetrated the electorate, a wide and an enthusiastic 

following? Is not that other force — the desire of 

mere conquest — simple and strong? They are but 

two of the parties most prominent among the many 

political opponents of Liberalism ; and surely the 

\» moral for us to draw from the methods of such 

X antagonists is that only by an attitude equally frank 

^ and by an appeal to sentiments equally widespread, 

can we hope to continue the work of the early leaders 

\ of reform. We must be convinced that, whatever 

adaptation may do in the details of working, the 

.. main force in any political movement is some clear 

j' and abstract principle clearly understood and con- 

X' ->^ tinually applied. 

. ^ The Liberals had, and still have, if they choose 

to recall it, a principle of this kind. Unpopular 

" as It may be at the present moment to refer the 

^^i^ \ actions of leading Englishmen to anything higher 

V" than some petty sense of inconvenience, or some 

% ^ local desire to ameliorate the machinery of the State, 

\ - the leaders of the Liberal party in the past had a 



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Twin Liberal Conceptions. 7 

very simple theory upon which all their political 
work was based. 

Generally speaking, it was of this nature — that 
no association, especially no association of a political 
kind, had a right to command the obedience of its 
members unless those members each had a part in 
the government of that which they were to obey. 
I say especially no political association. But it would 
not be difficult to show that in industry, and even 
in religious affairs, there ran through the whole 
policy of the early leaders of our party a principle 
of a very similar kind. Arbitrary government, mere 
assertion of right in the place of proof, these were 
the objects of their special and continued attack. 

But though this clause is common to all de- 
finitions of Liberalism, there is another idea upon 
which it is dependent. 

There ran through the Libgral projects a corre- 
sponding definition of the c itizen as a political unit. 
And it was a definition of what should be much 
more than of what was — an ideal far more than 
an assertion of existing fact. But every attempt to 
make the actual citizen approach more nearly to that 
ideal, every attempt which might make his material 
and, above all, his moral conditions suited to such 
a development, every political movement which was 
likely to produce that ideal by the mere fact of pre- 
supposing it, was befriended and ultimately adopted 
by the Liberal party. 



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8 The Liberal Tradition, 

Tbo-dtiypn whonLthey saw-a» th e b e 9 t-f)QssiMe 
" found a ti o n .aipo»-> w ht cb a ifee ^tete could rest was 
one whose economic and political independence was 
not, indeed, irresponsible. He was to be answerable, 
but answerable not to individual men so much as to 
the general conditions of the nation around him. 
^ He was to be an individual p oss essor an djaroducer 

^ -^of. wealth. H e^was to exercise thatjaculty of self- 
^^ testraint^ wWch^^ ^^^ even in the narrow field of mere 

economic science, the basis of all accumulation and 
of all sufficient material happiness. He was^ again, 
toJbe^o,sgIf^£especting.a'-<nember ^f. a ikodety which . 
depended upon his consent (and which only de- 
manded his obedience on condition that he helped 
to frame the law), that he., might .b^ counted upon 
not to give his vote upon a general issue for purposes 
lower than those of the common good. 

The men who made the Reform Bill, who re- 
pealed the Corn Laws, who demanded a juster basis 
for the suffrage and a better distribution of seats, 
who abolished some of the grosser privileges, and 
who crowned the effort of the century with the recog- 
nition of claims to self-government in the secondary 
nationalities of the empire — these men cannot but 
have been actuated as a whole by some such theories 
as these, of self-government, and of that only 
possible foundation for self-government — the citizen 
independent of personal control, and conscious also 
of a moral force restraining him from its abuse. 



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The Early Liberals, 9 

Most of them explicitly define this position as 
their own. Charles James Fox did so, Cobbett did 
so, Bright did so, and, to a certain extent, Cobden 
also ; but even those who did not actually lay down 
propositions so abstract, and theories which the 
vulgar, ignorant of English history, call un-English, 
by their every action in political life showed that 
these ideals underlay their efforts. 

The men of the . Reform Bill, as has often been 
pointed out, demanded the suffrage for their class 
alone; but they demanded it in terms which showed 
most unmistakably that it was but a tentative move- 
ment, to be followed, as indeed it was followed, by 
further attempts to admit much wider portions of 
the nation to the benefits of a representation which 
they had made, so far as districts were concerned, 
equitable and just. 

The Corn Laws were repealed by men who acted 
indeed upon an economic theory, but whose enthu- 
siasm was drawn from the fact that the Protection of 
the day was helping the very few at the expense of 
the very many. 

All that social work of which Lord Brougham 
was the leader in the earlier part of the century — the 
attempt to create small capitalists by thrift, and 
to secure their position by technical knowledge — ^was 
of a precisely similar nature. 

The great sympathy with the national movements 
of '48, which the Liberal party, to its eternal honour. 



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lo The Liberal Tradition. 

manifested in the face of strong monetary and class 
interests, proceeded from the same source ; and if, 
rightly or wrongly, it was on the side of Italian 
unity and of Hungarian independence, it was because 
it saw, or believed that it saw, in either case, a ques- 
tion of national self-government opposed to the crude 
traditional assertion of alien extraneous authority. 
There was not one of the main Liberal measures, , 
until very recently, in which this ideal was absent ; 
and if the Home Rule movement meant anything 
at all, it meant that this very principle of self- 
government i?^s so sa<^id asltoJie worthy of appli- ^ 
cation, even in a case where doubt existed in some 
minds as to the safety of the experiment. It was 
an integral portion of the development of Liberal 
policy^ and it .finally-demanded the self-government 
of a portion of the empire under the hypp.thesis 
(slowly arrived at, but finally established) that such 
a concession would do less than does its refusal to 
disturb the unity and the strength of the empire. 
Men differed within the party, as they differ to 
! this day, upon the question of how far all classes 
\ merited that general definition upon which our poli- 
^tical ideal was based. Such differences would 
account for the eagerness of some and the reluctance 
of others to extend the suffrage at some particular 
moment ; but they did not differ then, and they need 
not differ now, upon the advantages of special mea- 
sures and of a whole line of policy tending to create 



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The Civic Type. ii 

that type of citizen which they regarded (and which 
we, if we are their heirs, should also regard) as the 
only healthy foundation for the State to repose upon. 

That a man .should exercise thrift, that a man 
should pwn his own home, that a man should not be 
removed from the conditions under which he has to 
vote at the bidding either of another man or of 
material interests as pressing as any tyranny — ^these 
are the lines of action which they clearly marked out 
for us. 

They attempted upon more than one occasion to 
free that important two-thirds of the land of England 
from the ridiculous monopoly by which ten thousand 
men possess it in perpetuity. We have not followed 
them in this attempt. 

They have emphasised the primary importance 
of equality in representation. It seemed to them 
of the first moment, though it might not be of the 
first interest, that the national suffrage should be on 
such a basis that men equal before the law should 
also be equal in their position as voters. We have 
relegated that doctrine to an inferior position. We 
did, indeed, put it into our most recent programme 
in the phrase "One man, one vote." But to pro- 
secute this, to awaken interest in it — at least a 
sufficient interest to make it a matter of considerable 
Importance at election time — in that we failed. 
There were very many elections in which a plural 
vote helped to turn the scale. It was a matter which, 



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12 The Liberal Tradition. 

\> according to all the fundamental principles that have 

^ ^ run through the Liberalism of this century, was most 

\ "^ i immediately crying for reform. Yet because the 

individual voter, and especially the more ignorant 

v"^ r individual voter (who suffered most), did not feel 

V ^ % himself aggrieved, we let the thing go by. The 

^^ V^ yP^rty d^d not take the initiative of insisting upon 

* V \^ it, of bringing it forward as the men of the Reform 

^ \^ yf Bill would have done. 

^ v' Throughout the century political power, depend- 

J N2^ ing upon anything but popular representation, has 

^' been belittled by the traditions of our party, and was 

\ attacked whenever it showed itself in a combative 

position. Never has it done so more prominently 
since the Reform Bill than it did in the case of the 
Home Rule Bill. Here you had the House of Lords 
acting as a second Chamber, where most of them 
were directly swayed by private motives, and could 
not by the utmost stretch of the imagination be re- 
garded as the trustees of the national will. The 
. greatest of our leaders, in retiring, pressed this 
as the main point of our campaign, and it was a 
position most ably seconded for the moment by his 
successor. It would not be too much to say that at 
\ \ our last effort Home Rule was almost entirely 

dropped in favour of minor measures. 

The men who conducted the first efforts of the 
Liberal party would most undoubtedly have said of 
such a campaign that the point for the party to pre- 



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The House of Lords, 13 

sent to the electorate was the abstract right of these 
men to pose as a referendum. They would, and they 
would justly, have excluded as irrelevant all arguments 
based upon the citcumstance that for the moment the 
will of the House of Lords jumped with the will of 
the nation ; they would have insisted upon the point 
of view that authority for action must first be shown 
before the action, good or bad, can be approved of. 
We allowed ourselves to be overwhelmed by that / 
phrase, worthy of simpletons rather than of rational 
men, that the House of Lords had agreed beforehand 
with the verdict of the nation. 

And what about the case where the House of 
Lords should not agree with the verdict of the nation? 
What basis should w^ have for attacking its com- 
position if it acted, as it very nearly did act in the 
case of the Irish Land Bill, in flagrant opposition to 
the opinion of the vast majority of Englishmen ? 
We should have nothing to say. It would be told 
us, and it would be told us with truth, that we 
had not discussed, at the most critical moment, the 
fundamentals of its right to veto Bills, and that there- 
fore the fact that it happened to have gone wrong in 
one particular instance ought to be judged by the 
test of expediency which we had ourselves admitted. 

There is yet one more point in proof of our 
abandonment of principle for detail. It is impossible 
to desire to destroy without also desiring to recon* 
struct ; or, at least, it is impossible to have such a 



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14 The Liberal Tradition. 

desire and to convince any number of reasonable men. 
What did we propose as an alternative to that which 
all our traditions condemned as a false and anachron- 
istic conception of the state ? Unfortunately nothing. 
Did not the principles of the party furnish a sufficient 
basis for such a reconstructive movement? Was 
there not enough discipline among our members for 
them to admit some action rather than a mere chaos 
of disputing theories? There was not, and it is on 
^this account that our cry against the House of Lords 
made but a small and insignificant noise in the 
clamour of the recent election. The position would 
have been saved earlier in the century by these two 
main factors. First, we should all have been agreed 
upon the iniquity of such a veto power, irresponsible, 
and even by its own methods vaguely defined, exist- 
ing in our community. Secondly (and it is of the first 
^ importance), there would have been in our ranks a 
spirit of discipline sufficient to back up any scheme 
of reform rather than none. In both these essentials 
\ to definite action we are lacking. Now the abandon- 
ment or neglect of these traditions will be traced 
by individual temperaments to very diflferent causes* 
They are but aspects of the same development, but 
^ that development has been so complex as to make it 

C definable only by a separate definition of each aspect. 

^^ In the first place, it may be said that politica l 
1/ idealism has lost ground everywhere in Europe since 
the epoch of Reform. It will appear to most thinkers 



\ 



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'i 



I 



Decay of Idealism. 15 

as a reflect rather than as a cause, but there is much 
to be advanced on the side of those who lay stress 
upon this decay as underlying the defeat of Liberalism 
in England. Not a few of the goals which the Liberal 
movement ^et before itself in the early part of this 
century have been attained, and their attainment has 
produced the natural disappointment which appears 
when we are able to compare an accomplished fact 
with an old ideal. 

Free trade has come ; it has enormously increased 
the prosperity of England, but it has been accom- 
panied by a flood of population not wholly beneficial, 
and the distribution of capital has not proceeded at 
the same ratio as the desire for its distribution. It 
has left the weight of taxation, with which alone 
political responsibility can exist, still reposing upon 
, an insufficiently large number of citizens. 
/ The suffrage has been extended, but its extension 
\has led to a confusion of different interests quite as 
much as to expressions of the national will upon clear 
issues ; and there has grown a certain wide indifference 
which cannot but be the attitude of men who sit, as 
it were, as a jury to decide the fate of measures 
which they necessarily misunderstand because they 
have had no part in their initiation. 

The self-government of the towns and parishes in 
the country has been achieved ; and though this 
feature is the least disappointing (perhaps because it 
is the most recent) of the reforms, yet it is still in 



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i6 The Liberal Tradition. 

incomplete possession of the strength and permanence 
of an autonomy whose units are economically in- 
dependent. 

Upon the Continent similar successes have led to 
comparisons even more disadvantageous. No one, 
perhaps, especially no one in England, who looked to 
the possibility of a united Italy saw that nation in the 
future the close ally of two despotisms, or imagined 
it would reach the brink of financial ruin through 
military ambition or an exaggerated colonial policy. 
Nor, surely, did the strong opinion which ran through 
this country in 1849 on the side of Hungarian nation- 
ality, think to see that force merged in the general 
attitude of the Austrian Empire. Even those who 
advocated a free Bulgaria in 1876 could hardly have 
pictured the direct aggression of Russia on the one 
hand, nor the obscene tyranny of Stambuloff on the 
other. And, to take the greatest instance of all, 
which of those great patriots in France, or of their 
supporters in England, who maintained their long 
protest against the usurpation of Napoleon III. fore- 
saw its end ? No one, certainly, imagined a Republic 
bom of a disastrous war, crippled with an inheritance 
of national purpose far stronger than a political 
passion, and therefore burdened with a military 
system upon which even the Caesarism of its pre- 
decessor could never have ventured. 

In the face of all these facts, it is not wonderful 
that the more vulgar minds of to-day should con- 



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And its Revival. 17 

gratulate themselves upon a wisdom superior to that 
of the idealists of an earlier generation. It is even 
comprehensible that a Mr. Bloggs of Smokeville, 
tinkering at the wretched details of a royal com- 
mission upon nothing, should imagine that he is 
reaching that object which neither the eloquence of 
a Charles James Fox, nor the virile energy of the 
men of the Reform Bill, nor the sound logic of the 
English economists could succeed in attaining. 

For the revival of that idealism there is no way 
save the old and unsatisfactory method which was 
well worn when Piers the Ploughman advised it as 
the remedy of a similar disease 500 years ago — 
namely, that each man who desires the success of 
an ideal should keep its enthusiasm with certitude 
in his own mind, and trust through this to inspire 
others. 

You cannpt impose conviction by a system; 
rchanges may result from, they will not produce, a 
political faith? and least of all can one trust to that 
unhappy modern fetish, material event, to save us 
from the decay of ideals. Even were the ecpnomic 
tendency of the time setting towards the state which 
we desire, it would in no way strengthen our ideal, 
for its strength lies in our desire for a society too 
perfect for full realisation ;T6u^, on the contrary^ the 
ecouQfnic^ tenderuy appears w be against us, and if 
we are to remain in the traditions of Liberalisni^it 
must be by continually asserting, and by attempting 
C 



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1 8 The Liberal Tradition. 

to pr ove with acc omplished facts, that a strong- pur- 

I pose can give an impress to the material surroundings 

/ on which it acts ; by showing the economics of a 

/ period to grow out of men's conception of the State," 

1 rather than admit that they mould that conception ; 

■ even ^by asserting that in the mutual action of ex- 

j terior conditions and of abstract ideas in the State, 

/ the balance of the struggle remains in favour of the 

j^ Y human mind. 

\^ ^ \^^ And this leads us to the second and main aspect 

of the failure of the Liberal tradition — ^the main 

^ ^ aspect, because, even without that decay of idealism 

^^ (^^ which has just been alluded to, this alone would 

v^ account for nearly all which the Liberal cause has 

recently suffered. I refer to the immense change 

which this century has produced, and which we are 

now fully aware of, in the nature of wealth and 

in the consequent condition of society. This may, 

for the purposes of English politics, be best treated 

under the effects which it has produced upon agri- 

\^ culture, upon the industries of the great towns, 

and, finally, upon the meaning of the old political 

terms. 

The Liberal position with regard to the soil was, 
until recently, the following: that this, the most 
important of all the means of production, should be 
unfettered by restrictions made for the benefit of a 
small class, and that, above all, the partial monopoly 
which these restrictions created should be abolished. 



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Free Trade in Land. 19 

But this free-trading aspect of their argument 
had a nobler corollary: they believed that such a 
free trade in land would recreate in England that 
peasantry on which her power used to be based, 
and which two centuries of landlord encroachment 
and of landlord autocracy in the village have de- 
stroyed, perhaps for ever. They noted that in all 
the countries of Europe where such restrictions had 
been removed, the land had gravitated by the just 
rule of a universal demand into the hands of the 
great majority of the people ; they saw these peasant- 
proprietors industrious, thrifty, accumulating resources 
for periods of national emergency, and lending the 
community of which they formed a part a strength 
and a kind of promised permanence which purely 
industrial aggregations could never afford. They 
noted that land offered in small lots for sale fetched 
a fantastic price in a crowded market, that land 
offered in larger amounts was bought under con- 
ditions far more capricious and in a market far less 
ready. They therefore justly concluded that the 
honest desire for possession and for stability which 
had made the yeomen of the last century, the ideals 
of which Cobbett was the last and the manliest ex- 
ponent, were not dead ; and they hoped, when the 
barriers should be removed, that this eminently 
English force would reappear in the national life. 

This was the tradition they left us: we have 
done nothing at all with that inheritance. The 
C 2 



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20 Thb Liberal Tradition. 

economic absolutism of the landlords has remained 
untouched, while we have been — we and our oppo- 
nents with imitative, emulous vigour — engaged in 
fashioning organs of expression which must remain 
dumb until that absolutism is removed. 

The men who originated the Liberal policy found 
an agricultural England in which ten thousand men 
owned two-thirds of an area upon which two million 
were employed. They had before them, and handed 
down to us, the task of reforming a state of things 
in which the mass of the English peasantry had 
sunk to be the farthest removed from citizenship 
of any class in civilised Europe. Were they to 
return to-day they would find that we had made 
no single advance upon the path they laid down. 
More than a quarter of the people of England are 
involved in this system ; we have given them the 
suffrage, local councils, and a school — of a type, by 
the way, as far removed as possible from their con- 
trol : we have given them nothing which should make 
these conditions have meaning or vitality. When 
the century opened, a small class possessed a mon* 
opoly of nearly all the land and ;nost of the borough 
towns. Of these it retains, generally speaking, the 
mastery, and has added to its wealth the unearned 
increment of those new growths outside the older 
limits of the towns. It holds its monopoly by a 
system of entail with which we have tinkered^ in a 
farce of reform which had the deliberate intention 



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Danger of Delay. 21 

of leaving the heart of the evil untouched ; it is 
protected by a system of law which the class itself 
has either created or modified to its own interest; 
and [we, whose policy and tradition it is to break 
down the barriers which changed conditions have -^ 
made meaningless, leave this monstrous protective 
system unopposed and almost uncriticised. 

The evil is accentuated and our lack of policy in 
the matter brought into relief by this fact. We have 
hesitated until the task of freeing the land has 
become vastly more difficult than it was some few 
years ago. An accursed habit of delay, suiting^ 
rather timid or hypocritical men than those certain 
of their creed and willing to enforce it, has corrupted 
the politics of our time. It heaps up the material for 
revolution or for decay, and talks prettily of develop- 
ment. With political rights this hesitation and 
cowardice is less fatal. The State continues, the 
rights are obvious ; they are granted to the sons or 
grandsons of those who fought for them, and no 
great danger has been rim. With the reform of 
economic conditions it is otherwise. They change 
under our very hand ; and when a State is in peril, 
or a class of citizens oppressed by the false dis- 
tribution of wealth, the remedy must be applied 
at once, or the disease will have grown past cure. J 
We granted the suffrage in 1884, when a more 
logical habit of mind would have yielded it in 1848, 
or even in 1832, and the result was not very much the 



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22 The Liberal Tradition. 

better for the delay: but the yeoman class which 
might have been called into existence in the middle 
part of the century, would be created now with far 
more difficulty. It i s bu t one in many examples of 
the^fataL result of slow progress when once the goal 
^is plain. Ireland taught us thts^l css o n first. Every 
"rcfdrm has been granted too Jate ;- until the last and 
most fusTTJf^arma^be doomed, if we delay longer, 
to fall into the same category, and the self-govern- 
ment be granted by a Liberal or Tory administration 
at a time which finds the people of that island as 
bitterly hostile to England as are all the members of 
the race whom England has driven over seas. And 
so with the land. The time when small capital 
would have sufficed for the beginnings of the new 
class, when their local spirit and desire of possession 
still lingered, and when accumulation of wealth would 
have been rapid in a time of high prices — this time 
has passed. Our modem conditions would need a 
capital out of the reach of most of this class — a class 
which has acquired the habit of drifting into the 
towns, or of remaining in a thorough dependence in 
the country. They are losing the love of soil and of 
locality. And, above all, prices have so fallen that 
the beginnings would be precarious ; that accumu- 
lation of capital, which is the backbone of a social 
class, would be extremely slow. 

Nevertheless, the demand for the soil retains 
sufficient vitality to give a basis for reform. Amid 



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Demand for the Soil, 23 

all the peevish complaints which the monopolisers of 
the land are raising, the fact remains that the diffi- 
culty of sale and the low prices which they are 
perpetually quoting, apply far more to the larger 
than to the smaller divisions of the soil. Whether it 
be that the justly eminent position of country squire 
is not so coveted as it was wont to be by the brewer, 
the money-lender> and the dealer in sudden stocks, 
or that the appetite for a rank so easily acquired in 
this country is somewhat affected by the heavy draw- 
back of having to maintain more than the old pomp 
with half the old revenue, the great estates are finding 
but a poor market. With the comparatively rare 
opportunities of exchange in small holdings this is 
not the case ; the market is invariably more crowded, 
the demand is more brisk, the prices paid are much 
higher in proportion. 

It may be urged that under these conditions 
things would find their own level, that small holdings 
bringing a larger value would be the ordinary fonn in 
which land would be offered for sale, and that without 
the interference of legislation that division of the soil 
and creation of a peasant class which all men of 
sense desire for their country would be effected of 
its own accord. Economic circumstances frequently 
operate thus, remedying in course of time the evils 
which similar forces have brought into being. Indeed, 
it may be asserted that under conditions of free ex- 
change very much the greater part of remedial action 



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24 The Liberal Tradition. 

IS of this nature; but in the case of English land, 
the exchange is not free ; it is, in practice, less free 
than in any country of the West, if we except Russia, 
with whose laws, however, the readers and indeed 
the writer of such an essay as this are imperfectly 
acquainted. 

Three causes interfere with such freedom : entail, 
the complicated rules of conveyancing, and the policy 
of the territorial class. With the last-named it is 
impossible, or extremely difficult, for legislative re- 
form to deal. The landlords feel, as the members of 
an American trust feel, that the immediate personal 
advantage to be gained by selling in the more profit- 
able manner is outweighed by the disadvantage which 
would fall upon his class if this "breaking of the 
ring" should become common— an accident that 
would destroy monopoly itself, and with monopoly 
all the permanence and stability of their social and 
economic position of vantage. There is, indeed, an 
avenue of attack by way of leasehold enfranchisement ; 
but this, applying rather to urban than to rural con- 
ditions, must be dealt with later. Indeed, the only 
effectual weapon to use against so time-honoured and 
subtle a conspiracy is that of counter-organisation, in 
which Ireland has been so eminently successful. To 
counsel action of this kind in England would be futile 
in a moment of material prosperity. The sharp lesson 
of poverty which a disturbance of foreign trade (so 
likely with a protective Government in power) may 



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Territorial Usurpation, 25 

read England at any moment would immediately 
show the value of such a combination. 

With the two other fetters which bind the ex- 
change of land in England reform can deal. It is 
possible to destroy entail; it is possible to simplify 
title by registration. 

The history of England since the Middle Ages 
is the history of a slow and successful usurpation of 
the rights of the people on the one hand, and of 
the Crown upon the other, by a large territorial class. 
Until the period of that industrial revolution which 
has so signally increased the wealth, the population, 
and the perils of England, this class was supreme. 
During even our own time its influence has been 
modified rather than destroyed, and the country is 
still ruled by a legislature, a judicature, an armed 
force and an executive drawn from an upper class of 
which the territorial interest supplies the main ele- 
ment and direction. And you will find but a very 
small proportion of judges, officers, ministers or re- 
presentatives abroad who are not connected with or 
descended from this ring of families. And this 
assertion is in proportion truer as we regard the 
higher and more powerful positions ; for while it would 
be easy to discover a second-rate consul or curate, or 
an urban magistrate who has no link with the country 
houses, to find a series of ambassadors, judges, or 
bishops in this position would amount to a stupendous 
miracle. 



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26 Thr Liberal Tradition, 

Entail — ^the power of insuring their order and its 
particular members against the consequences of reck- 
lessness, of disease, or of crime — is the test of the 
success of this class. When England possessed a 
king, and when the central power, whose main 
function it is to protect the community against the 
insolence of the few, was a reality, the growing claim 
was vigorously fought It is almost the measure of 
the central power at any period to mark the statutes 
restricting the practice, or its equivalent under the 
circumstances of the time. For two hundred years 
or more that restraint has been absent, but a 
community which is at last approaching to self- 
government is at once able and bound to restore 
it The reform would be drastic, but it would not 
be complicated; it would be a violent change, but 
there is no reason why it should be a prolonged one. 
A Bill as simple and as direct as those which 
our opponents were in the habit of drafting when 
they created the various parts of this dangerous 
system would suffice to remove it; and even where 
custom and judicial decision, rather than law, is at 
the root of the mischief, we can find — if we go back 
to an earlier and more vigorous period of Liberalism 
— plenty of models for destroying an evil system by 
positive enactment 

Finally, a Registration Bill would remove what 
is, after entail, the main restriction upon the acquire- 
ment of land in reasonable holdings by that lai^e 



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Lawyers and Land. 27 

class of citizens who have neither the instincts nor 
the accumulations of the great landlords. 

The timidity which has been shown in the prosecu- 
tion of this absolutely necessary reform would lead 
one to suppose that legislators' have some personal 
interest at stake. The Liberal party has acted in the 
matter as though the words of Sir Frederick Pollock 
were as infallible as his legal knowledge is undoubt- 
edly remarkable ; and the word " impossible " which 
he has attached to this reform appears to have been 
transferred from the devout opinion of an eminent 
lawyer (and his able but less eminent colleagues) to 
the creed of an active and competent party. Indeed, 
so strongly has that legal profession, which is (after 
the landlords) the main element in our legislature, 
protected its inertia in the matter, that, were not the 
suspicion unworthy, one would ascribe it to their 
intimate connection with the class which their inaction 
has defended. 

There is no civilised country in the world in which 
this tabulation of the land has not been undertaken. 
The mediaeval state made it the very basis of organisa- 
tion and government ; and we can boast to-day that 
a title to land can be approximately ascertained (with 
inordinate expense, varying inversely with the size of 
the holding) which in the somewhat less developed 
times of William the Conqueror could have been 
immediately verified by consulting a register of state. 
It is indeed impossible to see what motives impede 



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28 The Liberal Tradition. 

this very useful reform, unless one is to fall back 
upon conjectures which in such discussions are 
never mentioned, lest they should excite too strong 
emotions and too vigorous action ; which of all things 
our modem reactionaries deplore. 

With the breaking for good and all of the per- 
nicious custom of entail, and with the freeing of land 
exchange by registration from the inordinate charges 
of legal procedure, the first and most important stage 
in the re-acquisition of the land by people will have 
been achieved. We should have the material gain of 
a land system in line with every other economic fact 
of our time, and the moral gain of being free from 
the reproach of hypocrisy which must always attach 
in a self-governing community to a party which 
advocates a systematic reform in words, while, lost 
in deliberate inaction, it favours the few masters of 
the community. 

The question of agricultural land has been touched 
upon at this length because, on the one hand, the 
greatest potential material for future citizenship lies 
in that unhappy and oppressed class which tills the 
soil of England, and because, on the other hand, the 
men who monopolise this soil have been the bitterest, 
the most inveterate, and the most hypocritical of 
those who have actively opposed the liberties of the 
nation. But industrial questions absorb a larger, 
though not a more important class, and while the 
evils are far more difficult to reform as a whole, there 



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Industrial Ideals. 29 

yet remain many (and these at the very root of our 
industrial problem) which the party must deal with 
at once if Liberalism is to have any meaning for the 
English artisans. 

The conditions which industrial development h^ve 
brought about in England are the very antithesis 
of those which Liberalism devises in the State: 
capital held in large masses and in a few hands ; men 
working in large gangs under conditions where dis- 
cipline, pushed to the point of servitude, is almost as 
necessary as in an armed force; voters whose most 
immediate interests are economic rather than political; 
citizens who own, for the greater part, not even their 
roofs. 

There could be no state more inimical to the ideals 
which the Liberals of Europe set before themselves. 
So desperate have its chances become that a few 
zealous and strongly convinced men have attempted 
to discover an avenue of egress, by way of denying 
that right of private property upon which all the 
civic virtues are based. Dazed by the violent rupture 
which has already taken place between personality 
and production, the Socialists have in every country 
declared for the consummation of an evil which has 
already spread so wide ; they would wish to increase 
the semi-servile condition of wage-earners, already 
corrupting the politics of England, until it should 
cover every family in the State ; and they seek to 
remedy a very present and terribly practical evil by 



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30 The Liberal Tradition. 

sweeping away the highly chimerical and theoretic 
barriers which human religion and a sentiment as 
old as the race have opposed to their experiments, 
among which may be numbered the sanctity of con- 
tract, the love of freedom, the virtue of self-control, 
and the inviolable right to property acquired by 
labour or by self-denial. 

HiLAIRE BELLOC. 



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31 



LIBERALISM AND WEALTH. 

The Traditional Connection of Economic Science with Liberal Policy — The 
Modern Type of Professor and his Statesman Pupil — Nature of Recent 
Attack on Free Trade Principles — Protectionist Revival — Lord Salis- 
bury on Free Trade — ^The Charms of a Protective Rigime described — 
Recrudescence of Tory Error — Lord Salisbury and the " Truth " — The 
Two Habits of Mind : (i) Optimism of Averages and (2) Pessimism 
of Exceptions— Free Trade Policy justified even for Agriculture by 
Comparison of Wages in 1770, 1850, and in the period 1860-1891 
— Hence Two Policies erroneously Inferred : (a) the Policy of 
Whiggism, or Inaction ; (b) Policy of certain Self-styled " Progressives " 
—Liberal v. Collectivist Theory of Industrial State— Catch-words 
Criticised— The Cause of the Reaction at the last General Election ; 
a Parallel drawn from De Tocqueville's " Recollections ** — Property a 
Postulate of Political Thought — Property in Land — Principles of 
Liberal Land Policy — ^The Pressing Need for Free Trade in Land — 
Flabby Reasoning of those who inveigh against the Manchesterian 
School— The Results to be anticipated from an Extension of Artificial 
Monopolies in accordance with the Socialist Plan — The Question of 
Municipalisation — History of Municipalities — Liberal Framework^* 
How Cobden fought for Manchester— Definition of Liberal Attitude 
towards Municipal Enterprise — Natural Monopolies are the Proper 
Sphere of Municipal Enterprise — Doctrine of Natural as opposed to 
Artificial Monopoly explained, defined, and illustrated — Absurdity of 
the Socialistic Claims to an exclusive Share in Municipal Spirit — The 
*' Thin-end-of-the-wedge " Theory examined and found wanting— 
Return to the Monstrous Evils of Uncontrolled Monopoly, especially 
in America — Principle of a Graduated Income Tax — ^Taxation and 
Representation — Privileges and Vested A1)U8es — The Difference 
between Reform and Revolution. 

THERE was a time, not very far back, when it was 
as natural and inevitable for an economist to 
I be a Liberal as it is now for a licensed victualler to 
be a Tory. In the days of Cobden, a thinker in the 
economic sphere did not attempt to divorce theory 
from practice. One who had seen the nation groaning 



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32 Liberalism and Wealth. 

and starving under a protective system, or had 
marked the vast and rapid expansion of our wealth 
and resources which followed Com Law Repeal, 
could never have expounded in a merely academic 
spirit the doctrines of international trade. Then at 
length economy deserved its epithet of political, when 
a great party set itself to apply on a national scale 
the Free Trade principles which science had slowly 
disentangled from the accumulated experience of 
much misgovernment, extending overmany kingdoms 
and many centuries. Accordingly, for a brief period 
even the theorist was not ashamed to declare himself 
a party man. Of course, the economist always remains 
at heart an advocate of Free Trade ; but in the present 
epoch, when philosophic doubt assails every religion 
which is not established, and every interest which is 
not vested, the professor of economics is developing 
into a casuist ; he contemplates with stoical indiffer- 
ence the regeneration of a policy which he knows to be 
ruinous ; and instead of teaching the broad truths by 
which his predecessors convinced a nation, he prefers 
to sow doubt among a chosen few by hunting up 
negative instances, rehabilitating lost causes, and 
endeavouring with every species of subtlety and re- 
finement to make the worse appear the better reason. 
The idea of free and unimpeded trade, the determina- 
tion to sweep away duties, monopolies, and legal 
embarrassments are foigotten, and the British poli- 
tician is invited to watch Sicily and Greece reviving 



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Sulphur and Aliens, 33 

their respective fortunes by putting an export duty 
upon sulphur, and restricting the production of 
currants. No wonder, when they are taught to 
watch a doubtful exception and to forget a general 
rule, that responsible ministers are now proposing to 
" restore " prosperity by excluding enterprising aliens, 
whether men or animals,^ by refusing a limited supply 
of cheap brushes presented to us by foreign prisons, 
and by " protecting " a part of our commerce worth 
;£'ioo,ooo,ooo against a residue worth ;f6oo,ooo,ooo. 

A sneer at Cobden, a contemptuous allusion to 
Manchesterianism and the "dismal science" help 
nowadays to make up that small but choice reservoir 
of blind abuse, upon which Social Democrats and 
Primrose Leaguers draw for the great work of 
irrigating electoral ignorance; and so far, certainly, 
the crop looks green and promising. If the hopeful 
sheaves are to prove chaff on the threshing-lBloor of 
the next general election, it may be predicted that the 
Liberal party will effect it by once more bringing 
round to its side that hearty support of unbiassed 
educated opinion which, fortunately, always means 
success at the polls. 

Now, if the free-trade principles of Bright and 
Cobden and Mill — ^so largely adopted and put into 
force by Peel and Gladstone — had only represented 

^ By a mild provision of the Animals Diseases Act, the auimals may 
come in -if- slanghtered at the -port of debarcation. It is uncertain 
whether the men will be equally favoured under the Alien Immigration 
Bill. 

D 



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34 LiBBRAUSM AND WEALTH, 

the mental attitude of a few leading thinkers with no 
considerable following and no practical achievements, 
or if the free tr^tders had been mere opportunists, who 
adopted a cry and inserted it in the party programme 
to meet some passing mood or to win some temporary 
support — a progressive who called himself a Liberal 
might have had some excuse for joining complacently 
in the general chorus : ** True, true/* he might have 
said, " but their teachings are quite discredited now ; 
our principles are brand new, thoroughly in accord- 
ance with modem needs ; and if they do not suit 
they can be altered." 

An attitude of this sort surely implies the very 
grossest lack of political insight, to say nothing of 
political morality. For to deny the continuity of 
Liberal tradition and to break with the past is 
equivalent, under our system of government, to a 
declaration of political bankruptcy. Happily, how- 
ever, the mass of the party is still intact, determined, 
"tho' fallen on evil days, on evil days tho' fallen 
and evil tongues,*' to resist with all its force every 
pnrrn^^^hTnent of mnnopnly, whether sectarian or 
commercial, upon the legitimate freedom of the 
indiiodual^ and equally determined, when the pen- 
dulum of power swings back again, to depress those 
monopolies and extend that freedom in the religious, 
the political, and the commercial sphere. 

It is with the past and present relations of 
Liberalism to wealth and industry that the present 



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Sanity or Protection. 35 

writer proposes to deal. Some well-tried principles 
will be examined in the light of reason and experience, 
and if they are found to be good they will not be 
discarded on the count of age. There will be nothing 
new to present-day politics — unless, possibly, the 
attempt to reconcile practice with principle ; nothing 
original, except the determination to avoid gaseous 
opportunism. 

Another Essay shows how the oppressive in- 
cidence of the Corn Laws and other protective 
duties helped to create a vigorous Liberal sentiment. 
The conditions of oppression and misgovernment 
speedily gave the Reform party irresistible political 
power; that this power was directed constantly by 
intelligent and intelligible principles is explained by 
the splendid combination of philosophic breadth and 
political genius manifested by so many of its chosen 
leaders. To explain and justify the guiding principles 
of Liberal economics is becoming more and more 
necessary as each day carries us further away from 
the period of Com Law Repeal Free Trade was 
taught to the people in those days, firstly by aigu- 
ment, secondly, when argument had succeeded, by 
the comparison which experience afforded. Then for 
twenty or thirty years the arguments were forgotten, 
but belief in Free Trade was regarded as a condition of 
mental sanity. It was an axiom of English commerce 
and politics. The few Tory Protectionists who sat 
for agricultural constituencies were crotchety persons 

D 2 



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36 Liberalism and Wealth, 

who gave considerable amusement but no uneasiness. 
Only within the last five years of trade depression 
has the real Protectionist agitation set in. How- 
ever well advertised, a quack medicine will not sell in 
a healthy- community. The inventor of a panacea 
will never make his fortune unless the variety of 
diseases which he engages to cure is indisputable. 
For certainty of the disease creates in the human 
mind a vague presupposition in favour of the 
promised remedy. The same consideration applied 
to Economics explains why the quack remedies of 
Bimetallism and Protection were able to make some 
head in the lean years of 1890- 1894. 

• In the spring of 1892, at Hastings, Lord Salisbury 
discovered, when discussing the imposition of taxes 
upon imports, that there was "a good deal to be 
said for hops." But alarm began to show itself 
among his supporters in the manufacturing towns, 
and two years later the Conservative leader, speak- 
ing at Trowbridge, felt it necessary to reassure 
the town populations by an emphatic utterance 
before the general elections: — ^"No doubt I shall 
be told by some hostile critics that I am adverse 
to Free Trade, and that I am proposing a duty 
upon corn. I beg to nail that lie to the counter 
before it is uttered*" (A difficult feat, one would 
think, even for Lord Salisbury.) "I know that 
Free Trade is and must be the policy of this 
country. I know that Protection is dead and cannot 



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Lord Salisbury's Hops. 37 

be revived." These are strong words, but deeds are 
sometimes even more eloquent In May, 1895, 
Lord Salisbury was in opposition; in June, 1896, 
he was in office, and in that month his Ministry 
passed the Animals Diseases Bill, a piece of pro- 
tective legislation of the very crudest type. It is 
calculated that, for every breeder of cattle in Eng- 
land there are 5,000 consumers of meat But the 
Government has decided that in the interests of 
the one, those of the 5,000 are to be sacrificed. 
The grazier is not to be allowed to buy the cheap 
cattle which the farmers of Iceland and Canada 
offer him, and butcher's meat is to be made arti- 
ficially dearer by a sweeping act of prohibition. 

But, it may be said, even granted that Lord 
Salisbury has been playing fast and loose with the 
country, is not .a return to Protection justifiable .^^ 
Ought not we to go back to the good old days of 
high prices and high wages ? 

Let us consider this argument An ounce of 
practice is said to be worth a pound of theory; 
and in the attempt to justify from history half 
a century of our economic policy, the scientific 
basis of the Liberal position will gradually emerge. 
At the last election a poster was extensively pro- 
mulgated in one of the Somersetshire divisions 
exhorting the electors to "vote for the Conserva- 
tive candidate and the good old times." A few of 
the older electors may have remembered those 



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38 Liberalism and Wealth. 

good old days, when a poor man was hanged for 
stealing two shillings, when the ordinary cause of 
death in winter was starvation, when no Dissenter, 
Roman Catholic, or Jew was qualified to hold any 
official position, when the national universities were 
carefully and jealously barred against great classes 
of conscientious citizens. In short, throughout this 
country those good old times were marked by 
perpetual and artificial famine. To bolster up a 
territorial aristocracy, the stupidest of whom might 
fatten on a sinecure while their more mediocre 
brethren ruled the country in the interests of their own 
class, com was barred from our ports, intelligence 
was excluded from our civil and military services. 
By the end of the year 1815 (to quote the unim- 
peachable authority of Professor Cunningham), "taxes 
had been laid upon everything that was taxable, 
and there was no incident of life in which the 
pressure of taxation was not felt." Who has not 
seen the walled-up windows of old houses, and 
wondered at the ingenuity of financiers who dis- 
covered that even light is a taxable commodity ? 

The charms of that Protective rigime are por- 
trayed in a lively passage written by Sydney Smith 
for the Edinburgh Review of January, 1820. 

" The school-boy whips his taxed top, the beard- 
less youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed 
bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying English- 
man, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven 



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Protective Tariffs, 39 

per cent., into a spoon which has paid fifteen per 
cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which 
has paid twenty-two per cent., makes his will on 
an eight-pound stamp, and expires in the arms of 
an apothecary who has paid a licence oi £100 for 
the -privilege of putting him to death. His whole 
property is then immediately taxed from two to 
ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are 
then demanded for burying him in the chancel. 
His virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed 
marble, and he will then be gathered to his fathers 
to be taxed no more." ^ 

But though you may destroy a Tory error in 
one form, it will appear in another: — Naturam 
expellas furcd, tamen usque recurret It has " re- 
curred" so recently as October 30th, 1895, in a 

^ Seventy-four years later America was suffering from an almost 
equally severe protection plague, and an interesting parallel to this 
passage may be quoted from a brilliant speech by the member for 
Missouri, delivered in Congress at Washington on the Wilson Tariff 
Bill of 1894 :— " God could have made this world, if He had wanted 
to, with exactly the same climate and soil all over it, so that each 
nation would have been entirely independent of any other nation. But 
He didn't do that. He made this world so that every nation in it has 
got to depend for something upon some other nations. He did that to 
promote kinship among the different people. Let us drop this un- 
natural business and return to the rules of sanity. There is no end to 
the ingenuity of man. You can fix up a scheme, if you want to, for 
raising oranges in Maine, but a barrel of those oranges would make 
William Waldorf Astor*s pocket-book sick. You can raise elephants 
in the jungles of Vermont, but it would take all the inheritance tax on 
the Gould estate to pay the cost. You can raise polar bears on the 
Equator if you spend money enough, but it would take a king's 
ransom to do it.*' 



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40 Liberalism and Wealth. 

speech delivered at Watford by no less a person- 
age than Lord Salisbury. After remarking, "We 
have had the strongest cause to lament that, 
though the Protectionists were resisted at the time, 
their warnings were not listened to more carefully," 
the Prime Minister proceeded : *' I cannot expect 
the Liberal-Unionist friends around me to sympa- 
thise with the feelings with which I look back to 
this old Protectionist struggle." No, he cannot. " I 
know we were wrong in what we said, but we had 
a truth at the bottom of the fears we expressed, 
and this generation is finding out that all has not 
been so smooth as the prophets of that day told 
us it would be." 

What, we may ask, was the " truth " that lay 
at the bottom of the fears of the old Tory party ? 
Apparently the prophecy that the repeal of the 
Corn Laws would ruin agriculture. Now, there 
are three classes connected with agriculture — the 
landlord, the tenant-farmer, and the labourer. The 
Protectionist argues that the high prices created by 
the Corn Laws meant prosperity to the farmer (who 
could sell at a big profit), high rents to the landlords, 
and high wages to the labourer. The prosperous 
farmer, it is said, could obviously afford both. Now, 
in the first place, it is a noteworthy fact that while 
under Protection between the years 1815 and 1846 
rents remained stationary in England, in the twenty 
years of Free Trade which followed they rose 26J 



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Analysis of a " Truth,'' 41 

per cent So much for the landlord ; and as to the 
farmer, the advance of rents which followed the 
introduction of Free Trade may be taken as in- 
dicating a substantial increase in his prosperity 
also. Indeed, it might have been predicted that 
his release from dear food, dear clothes, and the 
high prices of all agricultural implements would not 
do him any great harm. Nor need the Cobdenite 
shrink from the latest phase of the question. For 
serious as has been the depreciation of agricultural 
land values in Free Trade England during the last 
fifteen years, the distress has, at any rate, been 
immensely alleviated by the cheapness of food, 
clothes, and all the instruments of production. Con- 
trast this with the unmitigated misery and bank- 
ruptcy of the unfortunate farmer in " protected " 
America. 

The "truth," then, to which Lord Salisbury 
alluded as at the bottom of the fears of his party 
must have referred to the impending ruin of the 
agricultural labourer. By Free Trade he would, of 
course, stand to gain enormously from the cheapen- 
ing of food, clothes, and all articles of consumption. 
But this gain, we are to understand, has been more 
than counterbalanced by an immense drop in wages. 
The " theory " (stated in its naked simplicity) is that 
high wages necessarily follow high prices and low 
wages low prices. And the Tory members who 
represent county divisions constantly assert that 



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42 Liberalism and Wealth, 

wages depend on prices. They say to the rustic : 
" You cannot expect a rise in wages unless you get a 
rise in prices." 

Let us consider the facts. During the year 1895 
the price of wheat averaged about 25s. the quarter. 
In the period between 1786 and 1846 the average 
yearly price of wheat fluctuated between 39s. and 
126s. the quarter. During the last ten years it has 
varied between 21s. and 35s. If, then, there is 
any truth in the Chaplin -Winchilsea doctrine, we 
shall expect to find a very large fall in agricultural 
wages in the latter as compared with the former 
period, mpre particularly when we reflect on the late 
increase in the buying power of gold in terms of 
commodities. But what has actually happened? 
Why, the very converse of what our political squires 
teach their dependents to expect and believe. The 
enormous fall in prices has been accompanied by an 
equally remarkable rise in wages. And the philo- 
sopher, when he adds the real to the nominal advance 
(remembering that one sovereign represents in buying 
power at least as much as did 30s. fifty years ago), 
may well be forgiven if he proclaims himself to be 
not only a convinced free-trader, but a dogmatic 
optimist. 

The question, indeed, is one of such fundamental 
importance that no apology is needed for considering 
it in some further detail. The statistics in themselves 
form a complete vindication of Free Trade, and 



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Protectionists Old and New. 43 

upset the position of orators — ^protectionist or col- 
lectivist * — who, trading on their own ignorance and 
the sympathy of their hearers, join in vilifying the 
Manchester school and the results of free-trade 
polic}\ These would-be Galileos of sociology look 
upon the world at large, and England in particular, 
with a sort of mental squint. The frame of mind 
which prompts their utterances has been already 
described in an English classic. Carlyle, in "Past 
and Present," alluding to their predecessors who used 
to declaim in favour of the retention of .the Com 
Law, says there was " no argument advanced for it 
but such as might make the angels and almost the 
very jackasses weep." The opponents of Cobden, 
however, had an excuse which will always possess 
a certain validity in human affairs. Free Trade was 
then an untried, almost an unknown system, and 
Corn Law Repeal presented itself to their slothful 
minds not as a scientific and certain reform, but as a 
leap in the dark which might result in national ruin. 
They, therefore, only sinned against reason ; their 
followers sin also against experience. 

Mr. Asquith, indeed, has recently warned his 
party against indulging overmuch in "an optimism 
of averages." "We have witnessed," he said, "a 
sensible and remarkable rise in the level of material 
comfort, but we are too apt to forget that that very 

^ I make the distinction here, although, as will appear later, it 
cannot ultimately be maintained. 



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44 Liberalism and Wealth, 

average rise is perfectly consistent with deeper^ 
depression and more glaring contrasts than have ever 
existed before." 

The warning is characteristic of a reformer, and 
is at once the best proof of the splendid success 
of Liberal principles of economy and finance in the 
past fifty years, and the best assurance that, by 
renewed vigour in their defence and exposition, and 
renewed confidence in their application and extension, 
the party will again be able to add to its glorious 
roll of legislative enactments in favour of the freedom 
of commerce and the equality of opportunities. 

But the question arises — Is the present a time in 
which the public mind is lulled in an optimism of 
averages ? On the contrary, it is surely a period of 
scares like " Made in Germany " ; and English people 
are beginning to indulge very widely in a spirit which 
may fairly be called " pessimism of exceptions." 

Let us take a specimen of the data upon which 
each of the rival positions is based. Mr. Ernest 
Edwin Williams, the now notorious author of " Made 
in Germany," tells us that, like all our other trades, 
shipbuilding is in a bad way. " Still more remarkable," 
he continues, " is the drop in our supply of foreign 

1 << Deeper depression '^ may refer to the increasing gloom of the 
Independent Labour Party. As will appear later, the best statistics 
show that the reyerse is true of economic conditions. A labourer of 
fifty years ago, who then earned an average wage, would now be far 
below the average, and would probably be classed with the submerged 
tenth. 



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Made in Germany. 



45 



warships from 12,877 tons in 1874 to 2,483 tons 
in 1894." 

I append a table (borrowed from the Progressive 
Review^ vol. i., p. 282), to illustrate the duplicity of 
the author and the ostrich-like digestion of a public 
which has already swallowed four editions. 

After inquiry, I should much doubt whether these 
figures are reliable or correct. ^ But they are the 
figures used by Mr. Williams as most suitable for 
his brief. A pessimist who wishes to frighten the 
public will learn much from a practical lesson in 
" how to select the shipping accounts." 



Tonnage of Wardships built in the United Kingdom for 
Foreign Countries. 





Tontf. 




Tons. 


1870 ... 


970 


1890 


... 3,437 


I87I ... 


80 


1891 


300 


1872 ... 


40 


1892 


... 2,792 


1873 ... 


280 


1893 ... 


... 2,471 


1874 ... . 


. 12,877 


1894 


... 2483 


1875 ... 


. 12,280 


1895 ... 


... 4,152 


1876 ... 


H 







^ A friend gives me the following as the approximately correct 
figures for the years 1 891- 1896. Torpedo craft (which of course form 
a very important item in the trade) are excluded. 



1891 
1893 

1893 
1894 

189s 
1896 



T0Q8# 

2,300 

12,900 

6,000 
875 
4,740 
30,000 (apparently a record}. 



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46 Liberalism and Wealth, 

Every shrewd observer can parallel the case 
almost daily from his newspaper. But the nation 
has no redress against those who ignorantly or 
deliberately juggle with its accounts, and present 
disconnected aspects of its commercial balance-sheet. 

If anyone ever reaches chap. viii. of " Made in 
Germany/' entitled " What must we do to be saved ? " 
he will find that Mr. Williams, omitting an obvious 
reference, " Sell all thou hast and give to the poor,** 
provides a wonderful substitute for an old answer. 
The substitute, of course, is "Fair Trade." Not a 
word of the disastrous consequences it once entailed 
upon Great Britain, not a word of the wretchedness 
it has created abroad and in America. No syllable 
escapes Mr. Williams with regard to Protectionist 
experiments in our own colonies. They are already 
groaning under the attempt to keep up their " native," 
or rather exotic, industries for the benefit of a few 
manufacturers. They are already beginning to de- 
clare for Free Trade ^ (as we did), after experiencing 
and suffering Protection. But a wide study and 
comparison of the results of Free Trade and Pro- 
tection would not harmonise with Mr. Williams's 
conclusion. The conclusion, in fact, was the chief 
element in the original premise, and the argument 
runs: — ^**I am a Fair Trader; I have gathered a 

^ G>mpare especially recent l^sUtion in New South Wales 
aikl Queensland, and the victory of the Free Trade party in 
Canada. 



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Pessimism of Exceptions. 47 

number of exceptions to the progress of a Free 
Trade country; therefore England must adopt Fair 
Trade/' He even disguises the remarkable circum- 
stance that the expansion of German commerce has 
been synchronous with her approximation to Free 
Trade : the Zollverein, which for England would be 
a relapse towards Protection, was for Germany an 
important step towards Free Trade. But all this has 
to be painfully and laboriously concealed by " Made 
in Germany." One hundred and sixty pages exist 
for that one chapter. Parturiunt monies and an 
unobtrusive mouse appears, labelled '* the Tory doc- 
trine of Commercial Retaliation." Or, to adopt a 
more majestic metaphor, Mr. Williams, instead of 
dedicating an altar to pessimism, has erected a 
pyramid in honour of Protection, from a rubbish-heap 
of ruined firms and rejected statistics. But a Liberal 
will remember that even a pyramid has its use — as a 
mausoleum. Yet some may be staggered by " Made 
in Germany's " easy confidence and certainty of tone. 
For the benefit of these weaker brethren, a few plain 
facts are worth recording. 

About the year 1770, during that era of protection 
and " prosperity " to which benevolent Tory orators 
invite all grumbling workmen to return, the average 
wages of the agricultural labourer in England ranged 
from 5s. to 7s. a week. In Yorkshire the average was 
6s. a week, and in Lancashire 6s. 6d. Flour at that 
time varied from 2s. 6d. to 4s. 6d. a stone, so that it 



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48 Liberalism and Wealth. 

can easily be imagined how an agricukural family 
lived. Some years ago an old man near Huddersfield 
was talking about the high prices of flour in his boy- 
hood. Someone interrupted, "Why, how did you 
manage to live T " Live, sir ; we didn't live, we 
clammed." So, too, the thrifty peasant's family, in 
Cowper's " Winter Evening," had little fire — a " scanty 
stock of brushwood" — less light — "the taper soon 
extinguished." And for food — 

" the brown loaf 
Lodged on the shelf, half eaten without sauce 
Of savoury cheese, or butter costlier still. 
• •••••« 

With all their thrift they thrive not." 

Wages in the towns were of course slrghtly higher, 
but the boroughs were even more rotten from the 
municipal than from the Parliamentary standpoint. 
Indeed, their condition was insanitary and degrading 
to the last d^ree. The rate of mortality was fear- 
fully high, and the life of a workman with los. a week 
in the towns was even more deplorable than that of 
of his fellow in the country with 7s. 

Now it is often asserted that Liberal financiers have 
deliberately allowed agriculture to go to ruin for the 
sake of the manufacturing interest : — in short, that the 
landlord has been sacrificed to the manufacturer, aftd 
the agricultural labourer to the operative. We need 
not pause to show how the assumption of increased 
inanufacturing prosperity here tacitly made contra- 



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Protection and Wages. 49 

diets the usual argument against Free Trade. But of 
course one is employed in the country, the other in 
the town. For the Tory countryman is a curious 
contrast, or, at least, an interesting complement to 
his town brother. The two are brought up on 
completely different diets; their minds are illumi- 
nated by diametrically opposed propositions. 

Now, when we compare the wages of 1770 with 
those of 1850 or 185 1, after four years of Free Trade, 
we shall expect to find, on the theory of the rural 
Conservative speech, that in the great iron, woollen, 
and cotton industries of the North, where the vast 
manufacturing development had taken place, agri- 
culture, at any rate, is in a very bad way. Indeed, in 
the 'thirties and early 'forties, many of the small 
farmers were scared at the idea that they would be 
ruined by the prosperity of the towns. A story is 
told how, at the height of the agitation for the repeal 
of the Corn Laws, a Mr. Chonler (one of the Duke of 
Rutland's tenants) made a striking suggestion for the 
employment of the yeomanry in defence of their sup- 
posed interests. He reminded the farmers that they 
had all the horses, and could ride the Free Traders 
down. "Yes," retorted the Cobdenites, "and you 
have all the asses too." Nor can it be denied that 
the figures abundantly establish the reputation of 
the " stupid " party. In Lancashire the wages of the 
agricultural labourer had risen from 6s. 6d. in 1770 to 
13s. 6d. in 1850; in the West Riding of Yorkshire 
E 



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so • Liberalism and Wealth, 

they had jumped in the same period from 6s. to 14s., 
and in Derbyshire they had reached iis. In short, 
agricultural wages in or near the great manufacturing 
areas had risen on an average fully one hundred per 
cent. But in the eighteen southern counties men- 
tioned by Arthur Young the rise averaged only four- 
teen per cent, for the same period. Thus, in 1850 
wages were still only 7s. in Gloucestershire and 
Suffolk, 7s. 6d. in North Wilts, and 6s. in Essex. 
Hence the proposition that agricultural depression 
results from commercial prosperity, or that the 
growth of manufactures spells ruin to agriculture, is 
not only untrue, but the exact reverse of the truth. 
These reckless falsehoods need periodical exposure 
by a proof more elaborate than the appeal to science 
and common-sense. 

To return to wages, which we left at 1850, four 
years after the repeal of the Com Laws. The 
natural question to ask, in face of the present agita- 
tion for "fair" trade, is this: Has the increase of 
national wealth kept pace with the population ? And 
secondly, has the improvement in the condition of 
the workmen kept pace with national wealth ? The 
answer of every trained statistician and of every 
competent authority is fortunately the same. All 
agree not only that our national wealth has grown at 
a far more rapid ratio than our population during this 
period, but also that the position of the labouring 
classes has enormously improved. The authority of 



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Appeal to Statistics. 51 

Sir Robert Giffen might be regarded as a sufficient 
and satisfactory court of final appeal ; but those who 
wish not only for the opinion of the expert, but also 
for a glimpse of his method, cannot do better than 
refer to a paper read by Mr. A. L. Bowley before 
the Royal Statistical Society in 1895. The con- 
vincing brilliancy of the method adopted need not 
concern us now. Suffice it to say that a Royal 
Commission has already approved his reasoning, 
and admitted its accuracy. Nevertheless, since the 
information is comparatively new, and the source 
comparatively inaccessible, I shall not apologise for 
quoting words which deserve to be weighed by every 
social reformer who has turned his back on the social 
and economic principles of the Liberal party, and is 
dissatisfied with the half-century of free trade and 
free enterprise which it has inaugurated and carried 
through. The nation has been largely freed from 
private monopoly ; for fifty years it has made un- 
interrupted and unprecedented progress in culture, 
power, and comfort. Wi ll not Englishmen think 
o nce, twice, and thrice before they exchange t he 
assurance of in creased and increasing prosperity for 
th e dim Utopias of State monopoly depicted by a 
ge ntleman known to Social Democr at^ ^q << nur Inral 

fiorgaoisfir *' ? 

Mr. Bowley sets out from the question, " Who are 
benefiting most by the development of industry, 
those who obtain profits or those who receive wages ? " 
E 2 



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52 Liberalism and Wealth. 

"The first step," he continues, "towards answering 
this question is to find the actual changes in the 
total sum paid in wages and in the average money 
wage, and also in the gross receipts of profits and 
interest, and the average income of the nation as a 
whole." This step Mr. Bowley essays, correcting 
the changes in the purchasing power of gold by 
Sauerbeck's index numbers. " Leaving entirely out 
of question not only the causes of these changes, but 
also the distribution of wages among different classes 
of labour and the irregularity of employment, I have 
merely endeavoured to make as accurately as existing 
data allow a statement of this nature. In 1891 
1,000,000 men, women and children, in representative 
groups of trades earned per head 40 per cent more in 
actual coin, and 92 per cent, more, if the increased 
purchasing power of money is allowed for, than their 
1,000,000 predecessors in the same trades in i860 
and similarly for intermediate years." 

Finally, Mr. Bowley restates his conclusion with 
equal force and with some observations which are 
well worthy of the closest attention. "While we 
congratulate the whole nation on the immense growth 
of its national prosperity, so far as this is measured 
by gross receipts, it is not fair to grudge the working 
classes the share which they have gained. Those 
who receive the average, or more than the average, 
may be fairly considered to have obtained a wage 
which allows them fully to employ all their faculties 



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Freb Trade Justified. 53 

in their well-earned leisure ; but this cannot be said 
of the equally large number whose earnings are below 
the average. In so far as actual want is now only 
the lot of a small proportion of the nation (though 
intrinsically a large number), and comfort is within the 
reach of increasing masses of workmen, the greatest 
befiefit of this prosperity has fallen on wage earners ; 
but- this is only the righting of injustice and hard- 
shfp.** Wages, then, like incomes, have doubled in real 
value in thirty-six years. Just as the increase in the 
world's production of gold has failed to maintain an 
equal ratio with that of the world's production of 
commodities, so English population, in spite of its vast 
increase, has been quite unable to keep pace with 
English wealth. Yet we are told that Cobden's 
policy has not justified itself. Real honest labour, 
either with the hand or with the head, has nowhere in 
Europe and never in European history been so well 
rewarded as in the Free Trade England of to-day. 

Not that these reflections should lead Liberals to 
policy of sluggish inaction. Timidity in applying 
ideals will only retain members who are already a 
source of weakness. When fruit is over-ripe it may 
be allowed to drop off into the Tory basket. On the 
other hand, there can be no graver error than to 
suppose that the progressive measures of the last fifty 
years have produced a real increase of national pros- 
perity and of national happiness merely because they 
were progressive in the sense of being changes. That 



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54 Liberalism and Wealth, 

seems to be the idea nowadays of a certain number 
of s elf-styled progr essives. Thf>gf* peoplfr g^^m v^ry 
anxjous_to. djlstingu;sh themsd firstly^^irom. the 
nlHJj>Pra1«s who have principles ; and^ecojldly^fcoffl' 

the.-S2£iali«te i«ho~havfi prindpjes. Butjhe^true pro- 
gressive. Js^the- (AA4mdx3ciG.siQw Libera^ who^has. had 
principles and who keeps them still in use. The 
untrue progressive is an opportunist who trims his 
sails to every passing breeze. He waots to play the 
middlemjinbetwem, Liberalism and Collectivism; and 
he will succeed for a time until some strong man 
comes forward with one or perhaps two ideas, and 
with a scheme sufficiently clear and sufficiently work- 
able to arouse enthusiastic support and opposition. 
Then he will be forgotten. The new movement, if it 
deserves the name, has been begun in London. But 
London is no place for such a movement • The 
machinery of neo-progressivism may vibrate there for 
years ; there will be the sounds of the grinding, but 
nothing more. We shall get neither raw material 
nor finished article from this political race of non- 
productive middlemen. 

Future political changes in our economic system 
must therefore be in one of two directions. If the 
first, we shall proceed on present lines in favour of 
more and not less individual enterprise and Free 
Trade by throwing land, as we have already thrown 
com, into the free and open market. We shall aim 
at discouraging monopolistic tendencies, and at 



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The Liberal State. 55 

encouraging co-operative societies both for distribution 
and production. Such a theory will not favour the 
idea that State management is in itself desirable in 
the industrial sphere, or that an army of State officials 
will conduce either to political freedom or national 
wealth. Yet, as will appear later, there will be 
work enough and to spare for the ratepayer's repre- 
sentatives — local and imperial — in the control or 
administration of natural monopolies, those important 
exceptions which prove the ordinary laws of wealth. 
Red tape, however, is on this our theory to be 
regarded in general as the symbol not of democracy 
but of bureaucracy. In other words, we assert that 
national wealth and national character are naturally 
to^be built up oiL.^JYMv.g^ wealtEinTlnjiv^ 
character, and that itL-th p mutual play hetwren the 
two, forces thfi most pn sifiv£:>.^aiid^al5Q_lhe most 
important act ion is that exercised by the indivicl ual 
o n the community . Our State is not, and never will 
be, a deus ex machind who is to provide overpaid 
work for the unemployable at the expense of the 
employable, and equalise the advantages of the 
deserving and the undeserving. Nor will it, under 
the influence of the new morality, dub the citizen 
who pays twenty shillings in the pound a plunderer 
of the people. 

The upholders of the other theory^ flaunt before 

^ G>I]ectivist writers, it may be noticed, endeavour to prove not 
only that their ideal of a State ought to come, but also that it is coming. 



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^* 56 Liberalism and Wealth. 

^ ^ the world an ideal of a State_as_jLJast^"-g^ing 
^ concern " — a coiabJnatLQtt^ ol a. limited- liability €oi»- 

pany which manufactures everything with a gigantic 
store which distributes everything. This ideal implies 
the permanent adoption of two kindred economic 
errors — monopoly and protection — both of which 
imply a rise of prices and a decrease of wealth. For 
the would-be industrial State (whose salaried em- 
ployees have little or no personal interest in cheapen- 
ing the products of, say, State cotton or woollen mills) 
will find it impossible to compete with individual 
owners or co-operative firms where the managers or 
all the producers have a direct, personal and over- 
mastering motive for economising the methods and 
improving the products of their manufactures. The 
State, therefore, must first pass a law forbidding 
private cotton mills to compete against its own. 
Then it finds that it has lost the foreign cotton trade ; 
no goods can be sold abroad. On the contrary, 
cheaper and equally good material is being poured 
into the country from America, Germany, India, and 
Japan. The monopoly is therefore protected by 
heavy tariffs against foreign competition, and the 

In fact, the subjective certainty of the change is made a prominent 
** argument " for its objective desirability. The subjective certainty is 
complacently established by what I will call the Fabian syllogism : — 
Major Premise : By our law of evolution, nothing that did not exist in 
the past, but does exist in the present, can exist in the future. Minor 
Premise : Capitalism, which did not exist in the past, does exist in the 
present. Conclusion : Therefore, Capitalism will not exist in the 
future. Quod erat fabiandum. 



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State Monopolisation Explained. 57 

two policies whose partial adoption (when England 
was dominated by a Tory squirearchy) ruined the 
country and degraded the working classes, reappear 
in an extended and aggravated form in the bitter cry 
of those citizens who are almost as unfit for direct 
production as the old squirearchy proved itself to be. 

It may be argued on the moral side, that universal 
poverty will lead to universal brotherhood; that 
beggars, if only collectively dependent on the State, 
may exhibit a fine harmony of moral natures. There 
will be a touching equity in the procedure of the 
State when the high nominal salary is paid — say one- 
third in cash with a State I O U for the other two- 
thirds ; and the labourer whose real earnings amount 
perhaps to only half his old wages will console 
himself, forsooth, for his want oi boots and coals by 
the thought that now he is a gentleman with an 
official status and earning a salary. 

To these moral reflections a Liberal_ will..reply 
by placing individual independence above _State de» 
pendence, and co mfort (even when extorted from a 
capitalist) above indigence Geven at the lavidi hands. 
of the" Stat e). 

The moral musings of a Collectivist Agamemnon 
(who presumably will consent to be a director of the 
big company he is trying to promote) remind one of 
a very similar disposition to set up as philanthropists 
which manifested itself among his economic ancestors, 
the Tory landlords of Com Law days. 



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58 Liberalism and Wealth. 

They were "the friends of the unprotected," 
and professed great anxiety for lunatics and for the 
paupers whom their own Corn Laws had produced. 
In 1839 Sir James Graham, in resisting Mr. Villiers* 
annual motion for the repeal of the Corn Laws, spoke 
of " the breezy call of incense-breathing morn," the 
neat thatched cottage, the blooming garden, the 
cheerful village green. The repeal of the Corn Laws 
would lead, he added, to a great migration from all 
this loveliness " to the noisy alley and the sad sound 
of the factory bell." 

Three years later one of the lecturers for the 
Anti-Corn Law League made his way to Sir James 
Graham's estate and did not omit an ironic reference 
to the landlord's idyllic picture. " What ! " he said, 
" six shillings a week for wages, and the morning sun, 
and the singing of birds, and sportive lambs, and 
winding streams, and the mountain breeze, and a little 
wholesome labour — six shillings a week and all this ! 
And nothing to do with your six shillings a week, 
but merely to pay your rent, buy your food, and lay 
by something for old age ! Happy people ! " ^ 

" Merrie England " shows plainly enough that the 
modern monopoliser has the same idyllic cant in 
reserve ready to be produced for the benefit of the 
poverty-stricken State employee of the future. The 
present tactics of these amiable friends of the working 
man are to disguise from him the steady improvement 

* Vide John Motley's " Life of Cobden," i. 157, 210. 



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Philanthropy and Monopoly, 59 

which his condition is undergoing, and the solid com- 
forts which year by year are being added to his lot. 
They attempt to distract his reason and excite his 
imagination by vulgar and overdrawn pictures of the 
squalor and wretchedness in the worst quarters of our 
great cities. Here we detect a temper worthy of the 
revolutionist who wants to upset society to its own 
certain misery, and then strut over the ruins he has 
himself created. On the other side stands the true 
social reformer, who nowadays frankly recognises 
the splendid progress of the last half century. Like 
the revolutionist, he refuses to acquiesce in inaction. 
Unlike him, he acknowledges with gratitude what 
he has learnt from his predecessors, and regards their 
conspicuous success as an earnest of that which will 
attend future efforts, if only they proceed from 
the same great principles towards the same desired 
goal. 

It is sometimes asserted that there are quite new 
conditions to face.^ So ciety is so totally differe nt to 
what it was in the days of Cobden and_^ Bright. 
Humanity its elt has underg one sojme yiolentJgh^nge. 
iJurns was wrong : a man is not a man " for a* that" 
We are wonderfully in advance of our fathers. The 
up-to-date ephebe is a Socialist, an Evolutionist ; he 
can talk about the organic Unity of the State, and he 
professes an imperial instinct Let us admit it at 

^ C/I the false hypothesis which destroys so much of the value of 
Mr. Benjamin Kidd's " Social Evolution." 



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6o Liberalism and Wealth, 

once : there has been a change — in terminology. The 
young man is deceived by the long Latin and Greek 
words, and so equipped thinks he means something 
different from what his father thought under more 
homely terms. 

The organic unity of the State is one of those 
pretentious metaphors transferred from biology ta 
politics^which-Silggest one kind of unity by another^ 
and totally^ dyfefe«t~4«iuL The good of the com- 
munity, the danger of sacrificing the whole to the 
part, and the greatest happiness of the greatest 
number, were conceptions perfectly understood by'the 
Corn Law Repealers and by those who abolished the 
Test Acts. Similarly, evolution is a long and some- 
what stupid substitute for progress. Improvement 
in the common run of mankind depends upon the 
occasional " eccentricity " of individuals. Where free 
play is possible an individual will here and there strike 
out new adaptations to meet new wants. It wa s not 
theL-State-or-Society that made jhe .steam, engine but 
Steph^ison and _Watt, though without the State or 
Society the steam engine would have been an inven- 
tion in vacuo. But the organised monotony and 
mechanical unity of a Socialistic State is the nega- 
tion of free play, and consequently its appropriate 
motto should be not evolution and progress, but 
d^radation and decay. Thfx ^*^/^/y/ 4*icf4^ff is 
nothing more nor less than pride in the Empire, and 
that has existed as long as the Empire itself Lastly, 



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Revolution of Terminology, 6i 

we all not onl ^^re but always have been Socialists, 
ue, members of society. The truth is that the vague- 
ness of the term Socialism has led to so much futile 
argument that it ought never to be used without being 
defined. " Christian Socialist," for instance, is simply 
an equivalent for one who recognises (or desires others 
to recognise that he recognises) that he is a Christian 
member of society.^ Our religious ancestors spoke of 
the brotherhood of man. " Brother " is antiquated. 
Apparently "Socialist" is thought to suggest more 
sympathy with the submerged tenth. 

The young man, therefore, who has this terminology 
at his command is not necessarily, or as a rule, a very 
different being from the corresponding type twenty, 



^ Since writing the above I am sorry to say that I have come across 
the word in a debased sense as a synonym for one who cannot see the 
difference between meum and iuum, wherever "mine" or "thine" 
happens to be landed property. " Yet into whose pockets does the 
whole of this value go ? Not into the pockets of the men and women 
who create it, but into the pockets of those who, often simply because 
they are the sons of their fathers, are the owners of the ground-rents 
and values. Robbery is the only accurate word which a Christian 
Socialist can use to describe this state of things . . . Now what 
we Christian Socialists urge is, that a Parliament of the people, if they 
will but take the pains to send honest and obedient delegates to carry 
out their will, ought gradually, but as quickly as possible, to reverse 
that process, to take off all taxation from the articles of the people's 
consumption, and by degrees to tax the land values, till at last, taxing 
them twenty shillings in the pound, you take the whole of the land 
values for the benefit of those who create them.*' — Fabian Tract, 
No. 43. One wonders whether any money ever went into the pocket 
of the author of this sophistry "simply because he was the son of his 
father." He seems to think that the conjunction of terms in Christian 
Socialism is meant to be not a truism, but an oxymoron. 



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62 Liberalism and Wealth, 

thirty, or forty years ago. But there is one striking 
difference. Then the claim of a few to be leaders and 
guiders of Reform — a claim based upon knowledge, 
ability and enthusiasm — was conspicuously recognised 
by the great body of the people. Nowadays re- 
formers are legion. There is no coherence because 
there is no knowledge. The new East End curate 
who has contrived to surmount the barrier of the Pass 
Schools and his Bishop's Examination, or the new 
lady novelist of the middle class, who has surmounted 
the still more feeble barrier which the publisher 
opposes to want of matter, form and style, thinks 
that he or she has a social mission and is its 
born and accredited leader. A hold on economic 
and political science, with a wide experience of 
different classes, is in many quarters regarded as a 
positive obstacle for " The Work." An hour's con- 
versation in any East End Collectivist club, or the 
scraps of conversation gathered after an exceptionally 
good West End dinner are an excuse for a pamphlet 
on the Social Problem ; and a few pages will suffice 
to abolish property and reconstitute society. Heat is 
mistaken for light, ignorance for sympathy, and 
inability to discern distinctions for the power to do 
away with them. 

A dim apprehension of some fanatical upheaval 
was undoubtedly the cause of the tremendous reac- 
tion at the last general election. How many men of 
broad and liberal views, whose hatred of Tory class 



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Cause of React/on. 63 

legislation yields to nothing except the fear of licence 
and anarchy, were driven behind the wall to take 
refuge, like Plato's philosopher, in a despairing 
political inactivity? 

England, happily, does not deal in Socialistic 
revolutions ; but the late revulsion of feeling is an 
exact parallel to that which De Tocqueville has so 
inimitably depicted from personal observation in his 
own country. The government of Louis Philippe 
was upset in 1848 by a sudden and accidental rising 
of the excitable population of Paris. The opposition 
were astonished and terrified on finding themselves 
not reformers but revolutionaries. There was an 
interregnum of anarchy. 

" From the 25th of February onwards a thousand 
strange systems came issuing pell-mell from the 
minds of innovators and spread among the troubled 
minds of the crowd. . . . Everyone came for- 
ward with a plan of his own. . . . These theories 
were of very varied natures, often opposed and some- 
times hostile to one another ; but all of them, aiming 
lower than the Government, and striving to reach 
Society itself, on which Government rests, adopted 
the common name of Socialism." History tells us 
of the ludicrous failure of these schemes for destroy- 
ing inequalities of fortune and for providing specific 
remedies against poverty. The momentary success 
of CoUectivist theories could not alter the desire for 
private property. The idea of State confiscation 



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64 Liberalism and Wealth, 

r 

merely gave a vent to the ingrained selfishness of a 
would-be Socialistic population. "The time had 
come to try to turn to account any scapegrace 
whom one had in one's family. If good luck would 
have it that one had a cousin, a brother, or a son who 
had become ruined by his disorderly life, one could 
be sure that he was in a fair way to succeed ; and if 
he had become known by the promulgation of some 
extravagant theory or other, he might hope to attain 
to any height Most of the commissaries and under- 
commissaries of the (new) Government were men of 
this type." 

The result might have been predicted. Through- 
out France, " fear, which had first displayed itself in 
the upper circles of society, descended into the 
depths of the people, and universal terror took posses- 
sion of the whole country." 

A general election with universal suffrage fol- 
lowed, and to the astonishment of its promoters the 
Constituent Assembly which was returned "contained 
an infinitely greater number of landed proprietors and 
even of noblemen than any of the Chambers elected 
in the days when it was a necessary condition, in 
order to be an elector or elected, that you should have 
mone)L" 

In short, in the France of '49, a population in- 
infinitely poorer and far fonder of ideal remedies than 
our own of to-day hastened to reject with alarm 
and disgust the attack upon individual ownership. 



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Property a Poutical Axiom, 65 

" Property had become, with all those who owned it, 
a sort of badge of fraternity." ^ 

So striking an instance of national feeling must 
fasten the attention of political thinkers. The 
" sacred rights of property " have always been scoffed 
at by the noisy and the thriftless. But " vox populi 
vox dei;'^ and a feeling that permeates and, as it 
were, cements society must be rather postulated than 
assailed in the legislation of the future. An illus- 
tration of the proper acceptance of this principle 
may be taken from our method of dealing with 
the problem of landed proprietorship. The English 
land laws are undoubtedly amongst the worst and 
most disastrous relics of class misrule. Something 
must be done. There is much talk of the nation 
taking over the land by purchase or confiscation. 
But no genuine Liberal who is alive to the principles 
of his party can wish to turn his Government into 
either a prosperous thief or a pauper mortgagee. 

The party has a land policy already — a policy 
which rests upon twogr^a^ pppripli^g in addition to 
the cardinal assumption that property has certain 
rights, and that those rights must be respected. On 
the one hand they have always asserted that tra^^— 
ou ght to be free and unimpeded ; that no in dustry 
can be in a sa tisfactory statg i"<-^ f?"^ ^rc\rc\ whirix- . 
capit al and enterprise cannot pa ss freely. Secondly, 

* We have quoted from a recent translation of De Tocqueville's 
" Recollections '' by Mr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. 

F 



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66 Liberalism and Wealth, 



!/^ / they maintain the B entham ite maxim that, other 
r,( things bei ng equal, t he greater the distribuiiQjL..of 

V wealthy j b>fi g r ea tex is^ the , l i iTiT)nn t^ happiness ^ 

^ These principles have been applied successfully to 

many problems of the past. It is through them, too, 
that we have already found to some extent the solution 
of agricultural distress. But, although much has been 
done by earnest advocacy of allotments and constant 
legislation, our agricultural system remains essentially 
diseased for want of the one and only cure. Free Trade 
in land. Monopolists are never a satisfactory class 
for the nation, at whose expense they grow fat ; and 
if they grow thin owing to foreign Competition, which 
emphasises their indolence and incapacity by under- 
selling them in their own markets, they are hardly satis- 
factory even to themselves. This growing feeling of 
discontent among the landlords themselves with pre- 
sent conditions may fairly be taken as an indication 
that the question is now well within the sphere of 
practical politics. Indeed, it is so clearly a matter of 
common-sense that it might be put with confidence 
to the country at almost any moment. An arti- 
ficial monopoly resting on entail and the countless 
expensive embarrassments by which the law checks 
free and cheap sale in so many different ways and 
places, is, like the House of Lords, an anachronism of 
the most fatal character in a country which claims to 
be enlightened and free. How would the Bradford 
cloth trade continue if every mill-owner's eldest son, 



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Free Trade in Land, 67 

however incompetent or unsuited to business, was 
declared sole heir by the law, and forbidden under 
any conditions to sell? Or, again, to take a case 
parallel to that of non-entailed property, how 
would Bradford flourish if every sale of cloth or 
machinery were only effected by means of a long 
legal process which added twenty, forty, sixty, or a 
hundred per cent to the cost of the thing sold ? 
Yet such is the method of our land laws, and 
under the circumstances it is a miracle that agri- 
cultural distress in England is not the atrocious evil 
which Mr. Chaplin would have us believe. If we 
may follow the analogy of what happened after our 
former Free Trade legislation, it will be difficult to 
make an exaggerated prediction of the prosperity 
which will ensue upon the throwing open of heavily- 
mortgaged and ill-managed estates to capital and 
enterprise. Once the way is opened for individual 
yeoman enterprise, and the trammels of the law are 
removed, agriculture will at last become a free trade. 
Instead of a dependent and "protected" class, too 
poor to be enterprising and too timid to bargain pro- 
perly with the landlord, there will arise under the 
new conditions a very different type of farmer, — a man 
of vigour and versatility, who will prosper by under- 
standing his business instead of spending his energies 
in trying to drive out by law (at the expense of the 
consumer) foreign competitors whom he ought to be 
able to conquer by merit. Then at last the prophecy 
F 2 



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68 LiBBRAUSM AND WbALTH. 

of Bright will be realised. " If the farmers," he said, 
'* exercise their own energies and cultivate the quality 
of self-reliance, I am convinced that this country, 
with the finest roads, with the best markets, and with 
a favourable climate, will be found to triumph not 
only in her manufactures, but also in her agriculture." 
When this first great step has been taken, there 
will be nothing easier than further to facilitate the 
cheap acquirement of allotments and to encourage 
small holdings or co-operative farms. But this is 
one of the all-important minutiae which would 
be worked out by the various local authorities 
in their own way ; for in the future it seems 
probable that only the great measures will be 
framed in the House of Commons. Municipalities 
and local bodies will arrange details in accord- 
ance with local needs. But the Parliament of 
Great Britain or of the Federated Empire will have 
to think more and more of the broader lines of 
national and imperial development, and less and less 
of interfering with the applications and deviations 
which local bodies choose to initiate in their own \ 

proper spheres of activity. General principles, there- i 

fore, are becoming more and more necessary to the 
existence of a political party, and the tendency to be { 

overwhelmed by detailed schemes should be stoutly i 

resisted. The country does not want to be flooded i 

with particular measures, but it does want to know 
what general line legislation will take. f 



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mmsmBmmmmmmm 



Emphasis of Principle. 69 

T hp T . ihrral party is wrongly s u s pertpH of SoriaU- 
ism-r-. that is, of regarding increased State activity 
as an end in itself Why ? Simply because its 
members have frequently defended particular 
measures, such as recent Factory Legislation, in 
a " particular '* spirit without making clear the 
economic and moral principles which underlay them. 
Yet the right course was plain and obvious. Thus 
it is by a si-r^ightfonvard r?ftrftnrr fn thn inrtrinr 
ofJEcsiinmir Wan»f» that thc^rtly matcriaJisfic as 
djstini;nifihff1 frftm thg moral jygtif'ril.tlgiL^^l^ul^ hfi 
majnja^ined not only^for free ^3:;^rf compulsory educa- 
tion and for the Factory Acts,^^ut for all legislation, 
past or future, which tends to prevent men, women, 
or children from suffering in their capacity of wealth 
producers. 

The^^., ixonomic roaoon — foi^— the-.^tate sending 
child ren to sc hooLis identiral with that of the farmer 
for train ing a young hors e ; the economic reason for 
the btate keeping children at school is identical with 
that of the farmer for not working a young horse. 

True, the school of thought which refuses to admit 
distinctions is at present predominant — at any rate, 
in academic circles — ^but the plain man will readily 
admit that there are two perfectly distinct and equally 
valid lines of reasoning by which the political philo- 
sopher may advocate an individual measure, a 
general principle, or a complete system. They 
may be briefly represented by the words Wealth and 



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70 Liberalism and Wealth. 

Virtue. Happiness is the middle term which indicates 
their connection. And what a vast amount of flabby 
reasoning has supported itself on the ambiguity of 
this middle term ! Liberals are willing enough to 
close with their opponents in either sphere, but one 
knows well enough the danger of directing attention, 
even in a single essay, to the proved laws of wealth 
and material prosperity. " Sordid inhuman wretch," 
" brutal Manchesterian," are the terms applied to 
those who demonstrate the national loss of wealth 
which must result from the substitution of " Fair " for 
Free Trade or of monopoly for competitive enterprise. 
By the strange irony of fate the inheritors of the 
wealth and comfort derived from the triumph of 
Cobden's principles are reversing the process. The 
moraliser may draw a melancholy satisfaction from 
the thought that their impoverished sons will be 
Liberals. 

It matters little whether the pockets of the 
average man are picked in the name of the State 
or of a class within the State. An artificial monopoly 
is a tax upon the consumer, less obvious perhaps, but 
not less impoverishing, than an ordinary Customs 
duty. A monopoly has exactly the same effect as 
a heavy duty. Cigars are a case in point The 
Governments of France, Italy, and Austria proceed 
by monopoly ; Germany fias practically Free Trade. 
The consequence is that cigars of equally good 
quality may be bought in Germany for little more than 



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Effects of Monopoly. 71 

half the sum which they cost in the other three 
countries. As a natural result, Germany alone has 
an export trade. 

This illustration is not, of course, intended as an 
attack upon the raising of revenue from cigars. If 
indirect taxation is unavoidable, luxuries are ob- 
viously the proper things to tax. What I do point 
out is the effect of State monopoly upon prices and 
production. My example only illustrates the truth 
obvious to every unmuddled brain, that every exten- 
sion of monopoly means a shrinkage of our foreign 
trade and a decline of the national income. Economic ^ 
ruin will assuredly be the escort of the Socialist's 
monopolistic Utopia; and England will only have 
emerged from feudal poverty to sink back into 
fraternal famine. We shall exhibit the splendid iso- 
lation of a nation with no foreign trade ; we shall be 
freed from the evils of competition, for we shall have 
no markets ; there will be no talk of dangerous com- 
mercial rivals, for we shall have no commerce ; the 
dream of universal equality will at last be realised in 
a monotony of universal pauperism. 

In the original Fabian Essays, however, the pro- 
gramme advocated is less nebular, and the construction 
more easily destroyed. Now English Collectivists 
may be divided into the economically enlightened 
and the economically unenlightened, into those who 
see and those who are blind to the evils of monopoly 
and Protection. The first — a comparatively small 



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72 Ltbrralism and Wealth, 

class — IS composed almost entirely of a leading sec- 
tion of the Fabian Society, which (since the publication 
of the Fabian Essays) has made a great advance 
towards an appreciation, if not admission, of the 
soundness of the Liberal standpoint. The change is 
marked by some recent declarations quoted by the 
Economic Journal for October, 1896, and by the pub- 
lication of a paper by Mr. Sidney Ball on "The 
Moral Aspects of Socialism." In his view, Socialism, 
"so far from attempting to eliminate * competition ' 
from life, endeavours to raise its plane, to make it a 
competition of character and positive social quality." 
The Fabian idea of industrial combination " is not an 
artificial creation, but a normal development of 
modem business. It represents a monopoly not of 
privilege but of efficiency." He admits that now 
municipal enterprise is kept up to the mark by 
private competition, but hopes that on its disappear- 
ance the same results will accrue from rivalry 
between " the local pride and civic self-consciousness 
of municipalities." But successful municipal manage- 
ment — a point unfortunately obscured in the pamphlet 
— ^has always been in the sphere of natural monopoly. 
It will continue to be so ; and the instances by which 
Mr. Ball tries to decorate his idealistic basis only 
show that even his comparatively modest erections 
for the future are founded on sand. 

The other — far larger — class of Collectivists 
appeal solely to the emotions, and are dangerous in 



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Two Types of Collect/f/st. 73 

proportion to the ignorance of the voting popula- 
tion. Their chief spokesman is typical of the revolu- 
tionary who in all ages blocks the way to reform. 
Mr. Keir Hardie will accuse Liberals of want of 
sympathy with the " submerged tenth " because they 
refuse to be a party to his schemes for equalising 
matters by submerging the remainder. Let him do 
so; true sympathy is the sympathy bred of know- 
ledge, not of ignorance ; and Mr. Keir Hardie's 
examination before a recent Royal Commission 
showed that he had not yet mastered even the ele- 
ments of the Labour problem. Fifty years of solid 
service to the cause of Labour will surely serve the 
Liberal party as a rampart against the attacks of 
wild, reckless, and ill-informed agitators. 

Yet the record of the past is but the earnest 
of present and future usefulness. Society is ever 
changing, ever in need of reform ; and administration, 
even if perfect to-day, would call for modification to- 
morrow. And now especially the immense extension 
of local government in town and country demands 
the earnest, sympathetic, and intelligent attention of 
all thoughtful Liberals. 

On the financial side there are the difficulties 
connected with the question of municipal ownership 
which ought to be frankly faced. An unexampled 
opportunity is here afforded for applying Liberal 
principles to new conditions. That the instance is a 
crucial one will be readily admitted by the Socialistic 



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74 Liberalism and Wealth. 

Progressive ; indeed, it is the position which he is 
most fond of choosing for his violent attacks upon the 
older Liberal economists. Let us first remind him of 
an incident in the past ; it will serve to illustrate 
Liberal tradition and to emphasise not only the 
steady and continuous determination, but also the 
long line of successful reforms, which have marked 
the party in its policy of substituting for the old mis- 
management by vested abuses a new power and a 
new authority in the administration and control of 
local affairs and local rates by the people of the 
locality. 

In 1837, at the age of thirty-three, Richard Cobden 
was actively engaged in directing a business which 
his own enterprise had just started, and to the success 
of which his undivided attention was necessary. 
But the great Municipal Act making a charter per- 
missive if a majority of the ratepaying inhabitants 
petitioned the Crown in Council had only just been 
passed. Mr. John Morley inimitably describes " the 
muddy sea of corruption*' stirred up by this per- 
missive clause : — " All the vested interests of obstruc- 
tion were on the alert The close and self-chosen 
members of the Court Leet and the Streets Commis- 
sion, and the Town Hall Commission, could not 
endure the prospect of a system in which the public 
business would no longer be done in the dark, and the 
public money no longer expended without responsi- 
bility to those who paid it The battle between 



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Liberals and Municipalities. 75 

privilege and popular representation which had been 
fought on the great scene at Westminster in 1832 was 
now resumed and fought out on the pettier stage of 
the new boroughs. The classes who had lost the 
power of bad government on a large national scale 
tried hard to retain it on a small local scale." ^ Every- 
one in Manchester who had a vested interest in an 
abuse (in other words, every Tory), from "the low- 
minded and corrupt rabble of the freemen and pot- 
wallopers," upwards to the wearer of the feudal livery 
himself, resisted the movement in favour of a charter. 
But they were not alone. " Will you credit it," wrote 
Cobden to a friend, " the low, blackguard leaders of 
the Radicals joined with the Tories and opposed us?" 
He calls it "an unholy alliance." But surely, as 
Mr. Morley points out, it is neither unnatural nor 
uncommon for bigotry and ignorance to join hands. 

Now from the very beginning to the triumphant 
conclusion of this movement to incorporate the 
borough of Manchester, Cobden worked heart and 
soul, making what must have been enormous sacri- 
fices of money and time in the interest of his town. 
For three weeks he was constantly occupied at the 
Town Hall merely in exposing a great bogus petition 
got up by the Tories. When he wrote on July 3rd, 
1838, to his Edinburgh publisher, he had been "inces- 
santly engaged at the task for the last six months." 

And now your modem Collectivist in the same 

^ "Lifeof Cobden," Jubilee Edition, p. 122. 



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76 Liberalism and Wealth. 

breath exploits municipalities and vilifies the fame of 
Cobden. The irony of things is often pathetic ; but 
here, perhaps, there is something more than pathos in 
the thought that " strikes along the brain and flushes 
all the cheek." Political ingratitude is fast becoming 
a fine art in public life. 

The first business, then, of the Liberal party was 
to abolish the old and hopelessly corrupt system of 
local government by semi-hereditary and totally in- 
competent authorities. The work of construction was 
laborious. Between the great measures of 1835 ^^^ 
1882 no less than fifty-five Acts having reference to 
municipal corporations received the royal assent. 
Still later came the two Local Government Acts df 
1888^ and 1894, which were intended, to quote a 
competent authority, "to reduce to something like 
order the chaos of overlapping areas and conflicting 
authorities." 

Thus the structure of local government in the 
United Kingdom (though not in Ireland) is in some 
rough measure complete; it is to the working of 
the new system that the politician must now direct his 
attention. And it is for theJ Liberal party — the party 
flf fH*^***^ — to infuse into the democratic instiHUfiOns 
which it has created that spirit and those principles 
which can alone ensure them a useful and peaceful 
development : for in England the stability of an in- 

^ A Liberal measure passed under the auspices of a Conservative 
Government. 



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Structure and Working, 77 

stitution will never be threatened provided its utility 
can be proved. 

Now here at length Liberals have a really great 
opportunity. The attempt to "capture" the Board 
Schools in the interest of sectarian orthodoxy has 
been accompanied by a parallel attempt to " capture " 
the municipal councils in the interests of economic 
heresy. Both attacks should be repelled, but they 
should be repelled with discernment, for in munici- 
palities and local administrative areas there are only 
a limited number of men with time, willingness, and 
capacity to serve the public. It is highly necessary in 
many cases to consider the character of a candidate 
as well as his " platform " ; and in a period of reaction 
like the present a sprinkling of able CoUectivists are^ 
a valuable leaven to a lump of councillors who erect 
cheese-scraping into a principle, and regard inactivity 
as a public duty. But there is a certain school of 
quasi-Liberals — ^the opportunists or middlemen of 
whom I have already spoken — who step in at this 
point and assure both sides of their sympathy. If a 
measure proposed by the Collectivist party seems to 
be catching the public eye, these gentlemen leave the 
Liberal ranks, rush in front, and ^advertise their 
connection with what they fondly imagine to be 
a winning cause. At the same time they declaim 
to those who are less " advanced " than themselves, 
in the long-winded and meaningless phraseology 
of politicians whose one idea is to avoid being pinned 



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78 Liberalism and Wealth. 

down to any principle or any belief, " that while 
desiring to emphasise the necessity for a progressive 
policy of constructive social reform, they are yet not 
prepared to affirm that the case for complete Col- 
lectivism has yet been satisfactorily established, or 
that every fresh extension of State activity in the 
industrial sphere is by any means necessarily con- 
ducive to the advantage of the nation." 

There is all the difference in the world between 
the blind and undetermined middle course of these 
untrustworthy political adventurers and the clear- 
cut attitude towards municipal enterprise and other 
similar problems which is marked out for us on the 
undeviating lines of Liberal principle. And yet this 
is also a middle course, and, moreover, a middle 
course which will take the Liberal for a few stages in 
the same direction as the Socialist party. These 
stages may be all roughly characterised as belonging 
to the sphere of natural monopoly. 

No w. , opposition to mo nopQlv is of co urse^a 
cardinal article in Liberal faith. The political and 
economic grounds for the assumption have already 
been suggested. Hence our political policy. In the 
past we have swept away many of the monopolies in 
trade, in government, and in religion — monopolies 
established in their own interests by kings, squires, 
or clerics. For the future we refuse to re-establish 
them at the bidding of Collectivists for the benefit of 
an army of State officials. 



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Monopolies Distinguished. 79 

But some monopolies are natural and necessary. 
Land is a complicated but indubitable instance ; 
for land does not exist in absolutely unlimited 
quantities. This circumstance has very properly led 
in most countries to laws discouraging or prohibiting 
the accumulation of vast estates. A " corner " in land 
cannot be contemplated with equanimity by any 
patriotic statesman. This, of course, was an element 
in the philosophic and statesmanlike idea which 
prompted the Death Duties in Sir W. Harcourt's 
great Budget. 

Now the Tories, as we have seen, derive their very 
existence as a party from the long, systematic, and 
successful attempts of their political ancestors to make 
bad worse, to turn a natural and unprotected into an 
artificial and protected monopoly. Squire legislators 
piled up a vast artificial superstructure on the top of 
the comparatively harmless limits which Nature had 
prescribed. Thus a natural evil, comparatively harm- 
less if reasonably controlled, has been deliberately 
intensified and aggravated by crass class legislation. 
When the House of Landlords has been released from 
the duty of voting on agricultural questions, as 
brewers are already relieved from the duty of 
adjudicating on licensing questions, a good Land 
Bill will open up a new field to individual enter- 
prise, and at the same time immensely relieve land- 
locked municipalities. But a further consideration of 
the problem is forbidden by the compass of this 



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8o Liberalism and Wealth. 

essay ; and therefore, without even pausing to dwell 
on the scandalous anomalies arising from the non- 
taxation of land values in towns, we must pass on to 
a somewhat more novel application of these same 
economic principles — these same time-worn and time- 
honoured tenets of Liberalism. The problems of 
municipalisation will serve as a test case ; and if our 
principles give no clue to a solution, it may be admitted 
at once that they are not only time-worn but out-worn. 
For the purpose in hand a " natural monopoly " 
will be roughly but sufficiently defined as any form 
of industry, distributive or productive, which does not 
under normal conditions admit of competitive enter- 
prise. Take one or two clear and undoubted cases of 
natural monopoly — coinage, sanitation, water, gas, 
and tramways. In each of these cases some individual 
or corporate body must carry on the undertaking ; 
for — in a modern municipality, at any rate — all five are 
regarded as necessary to the convenience and happi- 
ness of the citizens. The question is, Shall the 
consumer (deprived of the guarantee of reasonable 
prices which competition would give him) have any 
control over these industries } Four possible systems 
suggest themselves — uncontrolled monopolies managed 
by private companies, similar management under 
public control, and public management by a govern- 
ment either irresponsible or responsible to the people. 
Now the most zealous voluntary ist will usually admit 
in his calmer moment that coinage is the proper function 



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Natural Monopolies must be 8i 

of the central, and sanitation of the local authority. 
But every schoolboy, or at any rate every Macaulean 
schoolboy, knows how ignorantly and corruptly our 
currency was often managed by irresponsible 
monarchs, and how the absence of' sanitation in 
pocket-boroughs and other towns previous to the 
Act of 1836 demonstrated the local unfitness of the 
equally irresponsible potwallopers. 

The irresponsible monopoly of government may 
fortunately, however, be neglected as impossible 
under our democratic system, and we are left with 
the general admission that in the British democracy 
whose officers are responsible to the people, coinage 
and sanitation will best be managed by the central 
authority. The reason is not far to seek. In the first 
case ^ profit is inexpedient, in the second, impossible. 

But what is to be said of the three remaining 
instances? There is not the same consensus of 
opinion. Municipalisers and voluntaryists can both 
produce corroborative instances. And here, un- 
fortunately, the press "inquirer" usually stops and 
scribbles down or omits the figures according as they 
subserve or prejudice the moderate or progressive 
brief which he happens to be meditating. It is 
admitted, however, by every unbiassed judgment that 
in many cases of gas and water, and some few of 

^ It b interesting to notice that, when Mayor of Birmingham, the 
present Secretary for the Colonies laid down the same principle with 
regard to water. He held that it should be municipalised and sold at 
cost price. The council have accepted and acted on this ruling. 

G 



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82 Liberalism and Wealth. 

tramways, the municipality has stepped into the 
actual management, with consequences economically 
and politically justifiable; and that in all three cases 
the public interest has invariably demanded as a 
minimum from its public representatives the most 
vigilant control and the utmost caution in granting 
and framing leases. 

The reason is not recondite, and the facts, far 
from revolutionising economic theory or suggesting 
even a primd facie case for Socialism, are the very 
negative instances which are wanted to prove to a 
demonstration the soundness of Liberal maxims, and 
the national benefit derived from Free Trade and an 
unrestricted market. For it is exactly where compe- 
tition is seen to be difficult or impossible that super- 
intendence or even actual management by the central 
or local authority tends to become expedient or im- 
perative. Two sewers or gaspipes laid down by two 
different companies cannot well compete for draining 
or lighting one house in one district. Two sets of 
tram lines cannot run down one street Nor will a 
burgess expect to get his water rate lowered by a 
competition of three or four reservoirs each bidding 
for his custom. Here, then, are three clear cases of 
natural and necessary monopolies. Where is the 
supposed difficulty for an old-fashioned follower of 
Cobden ? La issez-faire is a principle which the great 
Reform ers applied broadly and r ationa lly, not with 
the stupid narrowness attributed to them by so many 



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Under Public Control 83 

modem critics. The recognition of the expediency 
of collective bargaining, alongf Tfitfi^''ffiF''irigfit^ tcT ' 
combine, are important elements in^Tlie Oberal con- 
ceptlon of economic anHpoTiticaTTre^^ 
the very first our advocacy of a freFTrid unimpeded 
system of commercial exchange, both at home and 
abroad, has been seconded and supported by a well- 
defined and thoroughgoing attitude towards all sorts 
and conditions of monopolies. Indeed, almost every 
Liberal movement from the 'forties to the present 
day has been emphasised by an effective onslaught 
upon some artificial ihonopoly or legalised exploita- 
tion of the consuming public for the benefit of a 
class. N or has Liberal doctrine at a ny rate been less 
explicit in expounding the correlative prirfciple — the 
necessity for^public control of natural aji^d necessary 
monopol ies. But -tha._Liberar~ppHtician Ts " often 
beTiind the theorist, and sometimes even over slow 
in~irpprecia'ttng^comtng practical needs. It is more a 
thaiT twenty "" y earT^iiee 'iMfr. Cha mb e rlaiir gave a \ 
practical exhibition of the doctrine in his great ( 
municipal achievements as Mayor of Birmingham, j 
But, strangely enough, even he does not seem to have 
enunciated those broad principles which explain the 
sagacity and soundness of his financial proposals. . 
And, generally speaking, Liberal leaders have been 
singularly backward in grasping and enforcing the 
whole theory of municipal activity. Its vast and grow- 
ing importance was, indeed, splendidly recognised 

G 2 



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84 Liberalism and Wealth, 

by Lord Rosebery in accepting the chairmanship 
of the London County Council. But have Liberals 
defined its field, explained its limits, and supported 
its proper manifestations with the enthusiasm of 
discernment ? 

We fear not; and the unnecessary intellectual 
coldness exhibited in some quarters towards the 
legitimate extension of municipal enterprise has 
proved as disastrous as the hot-headed emotionalism 
which welcomes every proposed extension of public 
industry and officialdom, local or Imperial, as neces- 
sarily a step in the right direction. Whigs tremble 
and '* Progressives " chuckle at the thought that gas, 
water, and tramways are "the thin end of the 
wedge," that they will lead to the municipalisation of 
glass, cotton, and all other trades. But, as we have 
shown already, the reasons which make for municipal 
action in one case do not apply to the other. The 
very men who on principle uphold public control or 
management of gas will throw their whole weight 
into the scale against any agitation in favour of 
turning cotton into a public monopoly. For gas and 
water are not for export ; they are produced merely 
for local consumption, and, being natural monopolies, 
they must be produced and distributed by one man, 
or by a single organisation. 

Clearly, then, the consumers, being unable to rely 
upon competition for giving them the article at the 
lowest possible price, must take some measures to 



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The Two Alternatives. 85 

provide that the price shall have, at any rate, a 
superior limit. Two courses are open. The Council 
may either form a committee to control the private 
company, or may themselves take over the company's 
works at a valuation and form a committee to ad- 
minister the department. Every thorough free-trader 
must agree that in such cases one or other of these 
alternatives ought to be adopted by the community 
in its own interests. In deciding which, vague talk 
about the municipality as an ideal wealth-producer 
may be at once dismissed. 

The decision ought to depend upon certain local 
circumstances. It is obvious, for instance, that 
in the villages and lesser boroughs the number of 
men both competent and willing to exert them- 
selves in local administration, always limited, is 
often extremely small. And if all those who com- 
bine public spirit with capacity are already occupied, 
it would be folly for a town to add, let us say, the 
manufacture of gas to its other functions. In 
such a case the local authority will get far better 
terms for the consumers by prudent leasing and 
by vigilant control than by substituting public mis- 
management for private monopoly. Or again — 
even granted that there is the requisite supply of 
ability — it may still be wisest to leave the lighting in 
private hands. For, supposing there to be a strong 
likelihood that gas will be superseded in the course of 
the next twenty years, a public body should obviously 



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86 Liberalism and Wealth. 

pause before sinking a large amount of its clients* 
capital in so hazardous an investment. 

So thorny is the path, and so cautious should be 
the steps of the intelligent Progressive — the Liberal ; 
so numerous are the practical qualifications which 
he will admit, even to the dictum that natural 
monopolies ought to be municipalised. For, in his 
view, industry is the sphere of voluntary trans- 
actions^ and of individual enterprise. The State 
will play its proper part in commerce by super- 
vision rather than by participation. It will re- 
cognise the importance of discouraging or abolishing 
artificial and of controlling or owning natural 
monopolies. 

In another sphere it will recognise that vast 

^ And here we are supported by Aristotle, whose economic ideas 
should be carefully distinguished from those of the new ** Aristotle 
according to Stewart." For Mr. Stewart's otherwise admirable com- 
mentary here and there betrays a strange mania for Stagirising modern 
conceptions of the part which a State should play in industry. In the 
new Aristotle the farmer " receives the reward of his labour in the form 
of the coat which a settled social system allows him to get in exchange 
for his corn from the tailor." Aristotle, it will be remembered (** Nico- 
machean Ethics," Bk. V.), carefully distinguished "Reciprocal" or 
Commercial justice from both " Distributive" and " Corrective." Mr. 
Stewart ranges it under "Distributive," and makes Aristotle r^ard 
trade as the most important instance of State distribution. The poor 
old Greek philosopher tried to make himself plain. He viewed a 
commercial transaction in a simple enough light, t.^. as a perfectly 
voluntary * * deal " between two or more voluntary agents exchanging 
their property. But this will not do. Aristotle, we are to suppose, is 
trying — obscurely no doubt, but still he is trying — to indicate the great 
truth that the State is a vast living organism, a mystic, omnipotent 
Being which distributes wealth to passive but grateful citizen-slaves. 



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Monopolies in America. 87 

fortunes are the proper objects of a graduated income 
tax, not only on account of the doubtful methods of 
gambling finance by which they are hastily accumu- 
lated, but also on account of the evils with which 
when cunningly manipulated they menace the con- 
sumer. Some very striking illustrations drawn from 
the United States of the tendency of vast wealth 
accumulations to create monopolies are to be found in 
Sir Henry Wrixon's recently published *' Notes on a 
Political Tour." That astute political observer very 
properly insists that monopolisation not only results 
from gigantic fortunes, but is also a means to their 
accumulation. " Rings, trusts, pools, combinations 
enable enormous fortunes to be made, but only by the 
exploitation of the community at large." I cannot 
refrain from giving two of the many instances quoted 
by Sir Henry Wrixon. Not that we need go so far 
afield. Anyone who has bought a novel at a railway 
bookstall knows from practical experience the effect 
of monopoly on prices. However, we can hardly 
parallel a custom like the following :— " A railway 
company will refuse to let its trains stop at a con- 
siderable town on the prairies, and fix its station 
further on, where it has a grant of land, so as to 
compel people to begin a new town there and pay 
what price it thinks proper for the building sites." 
Another case suggests one, at any rate, of the crying 
grievances that have made Bryanism : — " The practice 
was (I was told by those who had practical knowledge) 



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88 Liberalism and Wealth. 

for the railway companies to compute, as the harvest 
time came on, the utmost that the farmers or other 
settlers could possibly afford to give to have their 
produce carried, to fix their rates accordingly, and 
leave them the alternative of submitting to it or letting 
their crops rot upon the ground." Thus, while the 
foreign trade of the States is hampered and plundered 
by protective duties a similar taint is spreading at 
home and blighting their internal trade. Of one 
monstrous swindle due to an underhand piece of 
jobbery between plutocrats and a railway monopoly 
a leading New York paper recently remarked : — ** It 
is by such conspiracy between railroads and favoured 
capitalists that enormous monopolies are built up to 
prey on the consumer and to corrupt politics with 
their ill-gotten money/* Facts like these speak for 
themselves and lend a persuasiveness to the advocates 
of legalised loot which no amount of " popocrat " 
rhetoric could otherwise compiand. It is hardly 
paradoxical to assert that in the Property Defence 
League's chamber of horrors a millionaire meditating 
a monopoly deserves an honoured place beside a 
Bellamy " looking backwards." 

The principle of graduation in the income tax, 
which tends to check these huge swellings of wealth, 
is therefore, properly regarded, an encouragement 
rather than a menace to private property ; it provides 
security for fair and free competition, and, far from 
seeking to relieve the ordinary citizen of State burdens, 



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Principles of Taxation. 89 

its chief aim and object are a greater distribution of 
property and therefore of taxation. 

Here, too, there is a limit which Liberals will recog- 
nise. This limit admits of statement in general form, 
and may be said to be reached whenever the scale 
becomes steep enough to suggest to reasonable and 
impartial men that further graduation might either 
decrease the national wealth and well-being by 
driving capital from the country, or might, to the 
public detriment, create a corrupt desire among the 
poorer part of the electorate for an increase of the 
public expenditure. Than the latter contingency 
nothing could be more loathsome. Can it be 
imagined that any responsible politician will ever 
condescend to provide the employed, the unemployed 
or the unemployable with an interest in public extrav- 
agance ? The two attitudes represent the gulf that 
separates a Hooley from a Bright,^ or a Keir Hardie 
from an Adam Smith. That " representation implies 
taxation " is a principle which might under certain 
circumstances deserve as much emphasis on Liberal 
platforms and in the Liberal press as that which 
is now being laid upon " Taxation implies repre- 
sentation." Each represents an important aspect of 

1 John Bright's public motto was " Peace, Retrenchment, and 
Reform.'* Mr. Hooley has lately taken upon himself to suggest that the 
working classes should be bribed to support a tax on com by a promise 
of Old- Age Pensions. In other words, put a heavy and wasteful tax 
on the labouring poor, nominally to support the aged poor, really to 
enrich landed proprietors. 



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90 Liberalism and Wealth. 

individual liberty. The latter is the fortress against 
the corrupt legislation now demanded by a strong 
section of the party in power ; the former can for- 
tunately at present only be of service against those 
who will never be able to appreciate any argument 
except that of superior force. It need not therefore 
be further discussed. We shall practically agree with 
Sir Henry Wrixon's comment on an income tax 
recently proposed in America. " It is right," he 
remarks, *^ to exempt from such a tax the small 
incomes of the poorer classes ; but it must be 
demoralising to the sense of citizenship and the 
responsibility that ought to accompany the taxing 
power for the mass of the people to levy imposts that 
leave themselves untouched." 

On the other hand, " No taxation without repre- 
sentation " is a motto for every-day use. Every class 
will discover in turn an " intolerable strain " if it can 
only absorb public money without public control 
The feelings of the Voluntary school manager are in 
nowise abnormal. Every human being who "at 
charity meetings stands at the door and collects, 
though he does not subscribe," would welcome relief 
from the intolerable strain. And the manager merely 
wants to draw the whole of his " voluntary " subscrip- 
tions from the public purse. But what are we to say 
of the party which allows such a" demand even to 
masquerade under the patronage of its leaders ? They 
are, of course, the upholders of the privileges and 



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Privileges and Vested Abuses. 91 

vested interests which uphold them; but everyone 
who desires purity in politics will set himself against 
these various attempts to exploit the community in 
the interests of the classes. Privilege, indeed, is the 
keynote of what is anti-Liberal in political concep- 
tion. But of all class legislation, that form which 
defends or extends the diversion of public money to 
private uses is the most noxioua How much longer 
will an educated democracy permit the continuance 
of laws which constantly drive select classes of the 
community to the polls in support of their direct 
pecuniary interests ? 

At any rate, the Liberal policy is clear. It is our 
duty to oppose each clamorous demand that " a 
nuisance, a social crime, or a wrong, shall not be 
extinguished without paying the wrong-doer." But 
discrimination is all-important. " No compensation " 
is a very proper spirit in which to approach false 
" vested interests," or, more properly, " vested 
abuses." But we must remember that there are, on 
the other hand, genuine vested interests in cases 
where (to quote a famous Oxford professor of the 
last generation) a man, or a class of men, " have dis- 
tinctly done the public a service under an intelligible 
contract, the payment for which cannot in justice or 
equity be refused." 

The difference between a reformer and a revolu- 
tionary is seen in their manner of dealing with real 
and false distinctions. That almost all distinctions 



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92 Liberalism and Wealth. 

are in their practical manifestation distinctions of 
degree is regarded by the shallow sophist as a pretext 
for ignoring them ; by the philosopher and the states- 
man as an additional reason for patient investigation, 
with a view to giving proper allowance in law and 
administration. 

And it may be urged that the Liberal party stands 
out in almost lonely splendour, in virtue of the com- 
bination of ardent advocacy of principle^ith willing- 
ness and even determination to observe the most 
minute distinctions in application. What historian 
of our own times has not noticed the chivalrous, some- 
times almost Quixotic, justice which Mr. Gladstone 
has time after time meted out to the beaten advo- 
cates of privilege in Church and State? And who 
will not admit this attitude to be the ideal counter- 
part of the battle-winning logic of Cobden and the 
triumphant eloquence of Bright ? Not that this 
attachment to principle which has marked the Liberal 
party in England is a characteristic which has 
been entirely wanting to reform movements in other 
countries. But couple with it a large measure of 
success; add to both sympathy, moderation, and 
equity in the hour of victory ; and it may be said 
without fear of exaggeration that the world's history 
will hardly match the record of the English reform 
party during the last seventy years. 

This record, so far as it touches national wealth, 
has been hinted at in these pages, and here and there 



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Reverence for Distinctions. 93 

vindicated from some of the gross misconceptions 
which are now beginning to prevail, as we draw 
further away from the old Protectionist times. The 
rise in the standard of comfort among all classes of 
the community, great and satisfactory in all ranks of 
life, specially great and specially striking among the 
labouring classes, has been illustrated at perhaps 
tedious length from statisticians, the substantial 
accuracy of whose conclusions no person of repute is 
likely seriously to challenge. If there has been too 
much acerbity shown in attacking those who make 
diametrically opposite statements (especially con- 
cerning the past and present condition of the agri- 
cultural labourer, the stock-in-trade of their speeches 
and posters), the writer would desire to confess that 
he was often at a loss to decide whether it were least 
objectionable to attribute to great national heroes 
infantile ignorance or that peculiar fact-twisting par- 
tiality which would seem to be almost an hereditary 
instinct in certain ancient English families. At any 
rate, a little warmth in controversy with Tory 
" economists " is scarcely avoidable. 

The Socialists have laid themselves open to a not 
dissimilar reproach. In that movement there are 
many good elements — in fact, on the purely moral and 
social side, everyone with genuine sympathy for other 
classes than his own deserves the title. But in the 
economic sphere, substituting collectivism for social- 
ism, I can see nothing good in their doctrines that 



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\ 



94 Liberalism and Wealth. 

is not borrowed from Cobden, Mill, Gladstone, 
Harcourt, and Asquith. Some, however, possess 
economic grasp of the present, coupled with political 
vigour and interest in so remarkable a degree, that 
one is more pleased than surprised to see them 
turning to present-day Liberalism, and laying up the 
mediaeval barks with which they once thought to 
revolutionise the carrying trade of the world. 

Instead of vituperating Manchesterianism, they 
are beginning to help in employing to good purpose 
the popular institutions in whose foundation or im- 
provement the Manchester school played the leading 
part. 

But for that disloyal section, or rather fraction, 
of the party which has flung away the solid 
principles of Liberalism, and without comprehending 
the Diomedean character of the exchange has caught 
up the tenets, or at any rate the catch-words, 
of Collectivism — for these opportunists the writer 
cannot help feeling a contemptuous sympathy. 
They have exchanged golden armour for armour 
of brass, armour worth a hundred oxen for armour 
worth nine. Some will return, some will perforce 
retire and probably end their lives as Tory voters. 
For it cannot be too earnestly insisted that the 
Collectivist Utopia is as vicious on its economical 
as it is inhuman on its practical side : vicious, for 
it coolly ignores the proved evils of monopoly and 
the folly of discouraging invention and enterprise; 



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Liberal Ideals. 95 

inhuman, for it ultimately postulates the non- 
existence of that love of property which is invoked 
as the most potent instrument for the overthrow of 
society. A fine industrial State we may expect 
from men who are assiduously educating their 
followers on such principles as the confiscation of 
property and the repudiation of debts and contracts ! 
The Liberal party is not a party of the poor against 
the rich, but a national party. It desires the greater 
prosperity of the community as a whole ; and for 
accomplishing that end it believes in the extension, 
not the reversal, of the policy which it has initiated. 
By improved education to abolish the rubbish which 
is being produced and distributed for food and 
clothing, by amending thel and laws to foster a fresh 
race of yeomen, by encouraging co-operation to 
smooth away the antithesis between labour and 
capital, and by reducing the vast mob of middlemen 
who now prey upon the consumer to enrich both 
capitalist labourer and labouring capitalist — these 
are some of the possible lines of future progress. 
But individual freedom and national prosperity 
would be as incompatible with Collectivism and 
State monopoly as they once proved to be with 
Protectionism and class monopoly. On the other 
hand, the advancement of the just claims of the 
labouring classes, the improvement of their material 
condition, their elevation socially, morally, and 
intellectually, are not chimerical or illusive catch- 



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96 Liberalism and Wealth, 

words in the party programme. These ideas are 
embedded in Liberal principles, they grow and 
flourish on Liberal soil, and their fruit may now 
be seen in the solid and substantial benefits conferred 
by half a century of Liberal influence. 

Francis W. Hirst. 



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■■■P 



97 



LIBERALS AND LABOUR. 

The Threatened Divorce of Labour from Liberalism — The Socialistic Atti- 
tude towards the Liberal Tradition— The Liberal Attitude towards 
Socialistic Proposals — Need of a more Definite Standpoint for our 
Industrial Policy— Effects of this Want of Defintteness on the New 
Progressive and on the Old Whig— Liberal Unity threatened by In- 
creasing Specialisation in Politics — Dangers of Programme-Making — 
Attention to Abstract Principles need not divert Liberal Energies 
from Concrete Reforms— The Lesson of the Local Veto Bill— The 
Real Principles of Temperance Reform — Liberalism as the Party of 
Ideas— Two Ideal Forces at work in Liberal Policy : (i.) The Idea of 
Individuality freed from Legislative Regulation ; (ii.) The Idea of 
Individuality as guaranteed by State Control — ^The Liberal Paradox 
in Industrial Politics : Legislative Interference encouraged by the 
Champions of Individual Freedom — Liberals and Socialists may agree 
in supporting a Policy, but never in the Ultimate Reasons for sup- 
porting it — How State Interference promotes Liberty of Choice — ^The 
Statutory Regulation of Industry is not inconsistent with Active Com- 
petition, for it merely records Preliminary Conditions attached to the 
Contract between Master and Workman— Labour Legislation may be 
criticised from Two Points of View, Moral and Economic — The Ad- 
vantage of separating these Two Aspects in Discussion — The Ethical 
Aspect of Industrial Regulation— Ultimate Opposition between 
Socialistic and Liberal Positions— What is the Liberal Attitude 
towards Industrial Questions ? — Although in one sense a Com- 
promise, it is still determined by the Cdnsistent Application of an 
Idea— Employers* Liability Bill, 1893-4, illustrates this : {a) No 
"Common Employment," (b) No "Contracting Out"— The True 
Principles of Industrial Legislation and their Application— Liberal 
versus Socialist in Working Men's Questions— And Liberal versus 
Tory. 

1">HE title of this essay is one which has long since 
lost all claim to novelty; its alliteration has 
been used by " Labour " leaders to point a contrast 
and adorn a brand new programme, and by " Liberal" 
H 



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98 Liberals and Labour. 

worthies to plead a natural affinity and to recom- 
mend a renewed alliance. For, serious as is the 
present position of the Lib eral party when regarded 
as in^ opposition to forces avowedly un-liberal in 
tradition and patently illiberal in policy, the diffi- 
culties which meet it from without are insignificant 

by the side of tVip ^ang<>r<s whirh tl^reafpn it from 

^b^frt^'t ^^ >^F gym houSTboif^ These dangers are 
aggravated by the spirit in which they are raised 
and by the spirit in which they are met. On the 
^I!^^^n^» ^^^ p<'^r^f*tf^ *^^ ^^^ ^^^ Labour,, though 
they^re_ willing jgnough to claim that the mantle 
of^ Liberalism has fallen_j>n their own _ shqulders,^ 
appear to be particularly anxiQus. to. xepudiate-tite 
irS^r ation and the authority— jnay, even to.4oubt 
th?_Jl9PJ?s&rrPf previous wearers, of > that garment 
That it has been the glory of Liberalism in the 
past to vindicate the claims of the individual against 
all vested interest and all monopoly, is a truth which 
is either denied or ignored by those who are now 
claiming to monopolise sympathy with the workers, 
and who would fain create for themselves a vested 
interest in the purer emotions. How characteristic 
of the extreme section of the Labour party such a 
claim is will be apparent from reflecting on the use 
that is made by the more ignorant Socialists of such 
a phrase as "the Manchester school" — a phrase 
which no longer calls up memories of the struggle 
for cheap food and Parliamentary representation for 



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The Socialistic Attitude. 99 

the poor; but which is fast taking a place among 
the meaningless expletives affected by a part of the 
population in moments when the precise signification 
of abusive words is of little consequence. This un- ^ 
reasoning hostility to the record, to the very name, 
of Liberalism-:— a hostility displayed and encouraged 
by some of the men who owe most to the success of 
that party in vindicating the rights of free speech 
and free combination — is^ as has been said, an 
aggravation of the difficulties which surround the 
Liberal policy for Labour ; but in itself the circum- 
stance does not call for prolonged discussion, least of 
all does it justify insinuations of dishonest and selfish 
motive suggested by those whose honesty and dis- 
interestedness in the past have often suffered under 
unfounded suspicions. Singleness of purpose, gen- 
uineness of emotion, are no less clearly traceable in 
the policy of the New Labour party than ingratitude 
towards, and ignorance of, the achievements of older 
Liberalism ; and there is no need to discuss the. 
question whether, in public affairs, attacks of palpita- 
tion of the heart afford a complete excuse for actions 
which suggest a tendency toward softening in the 
bead. 

The attitude of " Labour" (to give the new move- 
ment its self-chosen title) to Liberalism wOuld thus be 
of slight importance save for the changing attitude of 
Liberalism to Labour (using the word in its wider 
and more natural connotation). It is characteristic 
HZ 



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loo Liberals and Labour. 

of a Liberal party that its members look with in- 
dulgence and sympathy on any revolt which claims 
to represent a progressive force. And the influence 
of the Socialist movement would be much less than 
it is were it not that its original effect has in its turn 
become a new cause, producing results which depend 
for their significance on the vague and ill-regulated 
sympathies of many avowed and enthusiastic Liberals. 
The reason for this want of definiteness in the posi- 
tion taken up by Liberals on Labour questions is not 
far to seek. The record of our party in dealing with 
those problems in which the workers are most imme- 
<Jiately concerned has been in the past a history of 
conflict against compact forces of greatly superior 
power in the'^ interests of oppressed, disorganised, 
and down-trodden units. So long as the employer 
is in a position of vastly preponderating influence, 
the message of Liberalism is not misrepresented — 
rather, it is given special point and directness — if it 
is put in a form which suggests that the interests of 
the worker are the chief, or even the sole, concern of 
the, party. But it is well to remember -that a time 
may come when the very success of this policy may 
make it necessary to change the form of its expres- 
sion. The need for such emendation is not, perhaps, 
pressing as yet; but it is even now important to 
emphasise the truth that it is only so long as the 
balance is seriously uneven that the weight of 
Liberalism can be rightly flung exclusively in the 



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Sentimental Progressives. ioi 

lighter scale. To employ a mathematical metaphor, 
it is only so long as the forces of capitalism are 
infinite, in comparison with the forces of labour, that 
the claims of capitalism can be justly neglected as 
infinitesimal in comparison with the claims of labour. 
In theory, this application of the inverse ratio is re- 
cognised by every Liberal who speaks of " equality of 
opportunity " as the watchword of his party ; but in 
practice the truth has been obscured through the 
circumstance that inequalities have in the past invari- 
ably been to the advantage of one class, and oppor- 
tunities have been invariably equalised by urging the 
claims of the other. Hence the problem of the 
limits to the rights of labour has not as yet appeared 
to Liberals to possess more than a theoretic interest. 
In opposing an immovable mass, as the schoolmen 
remind us, it is never excessive to employ an irre- 
sistible force; and many earnest Liberals have no 
better touchstone at which to test the proposals of 
the new " labour movement " than a vague sentiment, 
which is ready to identify with Liberalism any pro- 
posal, however illiberal, any claim, however prepos- 
terous, if only It is alleged to be put forward in the 
interests of the working man. 

In Labour questions, then, Liberals are face to face 
with new problems and with new remedies, and their 
attitude towards them is often wavering and uncertain. 
The present social policy of the party is ill-defined 
and ill-supported, and it is so because it is not, as 



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102 Liberals and Labour, 

heretofore, directed by the clear and deliberate appli- 
cation of Liberal principles to existing conditions — a 
method which in the past gave dignity, unity and 
success to the cause, and which would, were it 
resolutely pursued, inevitably do so again. Instead 
of this, Liberals have often approached recent pro- 
posals in an opportunist spirit, without grasping or 
applying any principle calculated to show which 
should be taken and which should be left. 

The result could have been easily foreseen. The 
emotional Liberal, remembering the glorious traditions 
of his party, and carried away by a sympathy which 
is as indispensable for the noble inspiration of a 
policy as it is inadequate for the prudent determina- 
tion of its content, is ready to recognise the features 
of the old Liberalism in every misshapen offspring 
fathered upon it by the new. And the cool-headed 
Liberal fares no better : in avoiding the exuberant 
emotions of the latter-day Socialist he contents 
himself with the sterile formulae of the antiquated 
Whig. He denounces every attempt to ameliorate by 
law the conditions of labour as tyrannical interference 
with the independence of working men, and blindly 
resists every proposal that can be miscalled Social- 
istic without any examination into its real purpose 
and effects. But a party of progress is betrayed no 
less by the stolidity of the Smug than by the 
flightiness of the Sentimentalist. 

Neither of these classes of Liberals is altogether 



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Liberal Disintegration, 103 

without aliold upon the great principles of the party, 
but the point of view is in each case so limited, that 
the application of these principles is often distorted. 
As a consequence of this, the great name of Liberal 
— **one of th? most beautiful words in the English 
language," as Lord Rosebery said — runs the risk 
of losing much of its traditional dignity. For, as^ 
always happens in such cases, the anti-Liberal critic 
concentrates his gaze upon that side of Liberalism 
which is furthest removed from himself. While ^ 
capitalists and landowners are denouncing the late 
Government as revolutionary, Mr. Keir Hardie points 
to the unsolved problem of the unemployed, and 
never remembers Mr. Asquith's Factory Act, the 
Railway Servants' Hours Act (which in the first 
eighteen months of its working brought some 10,000 
unemployed into railway labour), or the adoption of 
an eight hours day in Government workshops and 
factories (by which more than 30,000 workmen 
were affected). It is not enough to answer each 
critic in turn by pointing to the indignation of his ^ 
rival. A general who is assailed on both sides cannot ^ 
derive much comfort from the reflection that, however 
strenuous be the attack from one quarter, his army 
will be forced to maintain its ground by an equally 
vigorous assault from the other ; and although mathe- 
maticians tell us that a body, upon which two equal 
and opposite forces are acting, remains in a state of 
rest, it is plain that the internal constitution of the 



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I04 Liberals and Labour, 

\^ body IS liable to serious strain in the process. What 
is, above all, needed is a more comprehensive grasp 
of the basis of Liberal policy, both in order to justify 
the details of its development, and in order to 
establish the interconnection of its several parts. 
The increasing complexity of civic life and the 
consequently increasing subdivision of political in- 
terests has left many Liberals ignorant and careless 
of the broader aspects of their faith. It is easy for 
each of us to see how his own political hobby is a 
rigid application of Liberal theory, even if that theory 
be but vaguely comprehended ; but it is difficult to 
appreciate the justice and importance of applications 
on which others lay chief stress. And thus we have 
the unedifying sight of teetotal Liberals negligent of 
everything but Temperance reform ; of a champion 
of undenominational education hinting repudiation of 
Home Rule, because, forsooth, certain Irishmen are 
willing to get what they can for Catholic schools ; and 
of a Scottish member retiring in high dudgeon to 
the Highland hills because the Government which he 
was elected to support cannot give the crofters a 
chief place in its programme ! 

To this plea for a more philosophic view of the 
details of a Liberal programme — a view which, if it 
does not embrace " all time and all existence," at any 
rate leaves each burning question in its true setting 
amidst larger issues — it may be objected that con- 
centration is the key to success, in politics as in other 



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Temperance Reform. 105 

branches of human energy. " One thing at a time " 
is the motto of the organiser of parties no less than of 
the general of armies ; and the history of political, no 
less than of military, campaigns proves the importance 
of the application of an undivided force at the same 
moment, at the same spot. Were the question one of 
tactics, such a criticism would not be out of place 
(and, indeed, it expresses a trutli which not only 
guides to victory, but also, save the mark ! explains 
defeat). But the real question is not one of tactics ; 
it is useless to ask in what shape Liberal policy may 
be most attractively presented to the world at large 
until we have fully grasped the ideas which it is to 
express. In political, no less than in moral, life there 
is a categorical imperative — the rule to act from 
principle. An instance will show both the necessity 
of concentrating upon these foundations of Liberalism, 
and the slightness of the attention which is often paid 
to them. The Local Veto Bill of the late Govern- 
ment is, rightly or wrongly, regarded as largely 
responsible for the present Tory majority. If it be 
so, the blame does not rest with the Bill itself, but 
with the mistaken view taken of its leading principles. 
Had the Bill been what its opponents were allowed 
(too often, alas ! without meeting with vigorous correc- 
tion) to describe it to be, its unpopularity was natural 
enough. Why did not Liberals, instead of pre- 
serving a silence in itself suspicious, or giving a 
perfunctory denial to ludicrous misstatements, every- 



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io6 Liberals and Labour, 

where emphasise the ideas on which the Bill was 
based ? If it had once been made clear that Local 
Veto was no new thing, but had long been exercised 
by magistrates and landlords, what would have 
become of the contention that it was the new-fangled 
creation of a revolutionary party ? Liberals had 
illustrations for their argument ready to hand : in 
every constituency there was some magistrate's house 
with no beershop in vulgar proximity, and in many 
some estate upon which the landlord permitted no 
public-house to be built ; once it was known that the 
Bill proposed to transfer the power of regulating the 
position and number of public-houses from magis- 
trates and landlords to the general public, and to 
those who have the best reason for knowing their 
usefulness and their danger, how could it have been 
maintained that the "poor man" was in peril of 
being " robbed of his beer " ? And when it was seen 
that Sir William Harcourt's legislation would have 
secured the control of a monopoly by the whole 
locality for the benefit of which it is permitted to 
exist, who could have dared to declare it " a conspiracy 
of a few miserable temperance fanatics '^ ? If the 
democratic tendencies of the measure had been more 
fully realised, Tories could not have posed as popular 
champions in resisting it, and the appeal to the love 
of beer, so pitifully repeated by the champions of 
culture and religion, would have been as unsuccessful 
as it was irrelevant and disgusting. 



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Tivo Industrial Ideals, 107 

The above example shows that it ought to be much 
more than a cant phrase to say that the Liberal party 
is the party of principle. In making such a claim we 
are not flattering ourselves by abusing our opponents; 
we are merely noting the fact that the realisation of 
an idea, by and for itself, occupies a place in the 
mind of Liberals which of necessity it cannot fill in 
tempers of another political mould. Such an attitude 
has its special difficulties, as well as its unique com- 
pensations. The reason why the politics of Labour 
are threatening to raise divisions in the Liberal party 
is precisely because two ideas — each vigorously, if 
vaguely, held — are exerting two divergent forces upon 
the Liberal mass. The precise magnitude — even the 
precise direction — of each of these ideal forces is a 
matter of dispute ; those who claim to the clearest 
grasp of the facts of the one, are often the most 
confused in their accounts of the other; the ex- 
tremists on either side go so far as to deny the 
existence of the other influence altogether ; and the 
resultant activity of the Liberal whole is neither 
homogeneous nor regular. It is important, therefore, 
justly to estimate these two tendencies — ^to examine 
their nature, their force, their direction — in order that 
the Liberal policy for Labour may be seen to have a 
better justification than hand-to-mouth expediency, 
and may take its place as a reasoned product of the 
party of principles. 

The first of these tendencies may be represented 



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io8 Liberals and Labour, 

by the idea of securing individual freedom through 
the removal of restrictions — of the value to the citizen 
of free development as a factor in well-being — of the 
evil, both to the character of the unit and to the 
welfare of the whole body-politic, of every limitation 
set by law upon personal judgment and choice. The 
abolition of commercial protection and the removal 
of religious tests were not merely the relief of one 
part of the population from oppressive treatment 
imposed by the blindness or bigotry of a special 
interest or creed ; they were expressions of the 
abstract principle (quite apart from consideration of 
special material grievances) that the end of politics 
is, in general, best attained by a minimum of legisla- 
tive regulation. From commerce and religion philo- 
sophic Liberalism passes to labour. The restrictions 
under which manual toil was carried on were rather 
"stepmotherly" than "grandmotherly." The work- 
man's life— his occupation, his hours, his wages — was 
controlled by an agency which left his own interests 
not merely unrepresented but actually unregarded. 
In the early part of the century the old system of 
industrial regulation had lapsed into desuetude so far 
as it attempted to control the action of employers, 
but survived in vigorous enactments for restricting 
the freedom of ws^e-earners. For ten years after 
Waterloo the old method of extracting a standard 
wage from the masters was entirely obsolete, while 
the right of uniting and jointly demanding better 



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For and Against State Regulation 109 

terms was still resolutely denied to the men. The 
repeal of the laws against workmen's combination for 
obtaining better conditions and improved pay for 
their work, the establishment of the right to emigrate, 
the extension of freedom of contract — all such changes 
were nothing but expressions of the idea that un- 
restricted free-play was all that every citizen required 
to attain his just position in the community. Mill 
crystallised the principle in a treatise which, once for 
all, vindicated the importance of individuality against 
the blessings of State-regulated existence, and de- 
clared the full expression of personal character to be 
** one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, 
and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social 
progress.*'^ 

Side by side with this idea of individuality as 
secure from legislative interference there has grown 
up, in apparent contradiction, the idea of individuality 
as secured by legislative interference. Without enter- 
ing upon those speculations concerning the meta- 
physics of free will with which Mr. Balfour is wont to 
dilute the discussion of Irish whisky, it' is apparent 
that the mere abolition of restrictions will not leave 
the individual artisan master of his destiny. If our 
object is to secure for every man the maximum of 
free<levelopment, it is not to be attained by leaving 
each labouring unit at the mercy of the huge indus* 
trial system which surrounds him. " The answer of 

» On ** Liberty," chap. iii. 



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iio Liberals and Labour. 

modem statesmanship is, that unfettered individual 
competition is not a principle to which the regulation 
of industry may be entrusted. There may be condi- 
tions which it is in the highest degree desirable to 
impose on industry, and to which the general 
opinion of the industrial classes may be entirely 
favourable. Yet the assistance of law may be needed 
to give effect to this opinion, because — in the words 
of the great man who was now (1844) preparing the 
exposition of political economy which was to reign 
all through the next generation — only law can afford 
to every individual a guarantee that his competitors 
will pursue the same course as to hours of labour and 
so forth, without which he cannot safely adopt it him- 
self."^ Thus we are confronted by the seeming 
paradox that the party which sets the highest store 
upon untrammelled individuality, has yet been the 
most eager to call in the authority of Parliament 
for the regulation of the conditions of industry. 
Neither the result itself, nor the part played by 
Liberalism in producing it, can either be denied or 
regretted by any present-day Liberal Instead of the 
Elizabethan code regulating industrial employment, 
the last fragments of which disappeared in the early 
years of the century, the last half-century has seen 
the gradual evolution of an elaborate regulative code 
for the protection of labour. Not merely children 

^ Morley's " Cobden,*^ chap. xiii. The qaotation referred to will 
be found in Mill's *' Political Economy,*' bk« v., chap, xi., h la. 



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The Paradox of Liberalism. hi 

and women-workers, but even adult men find their 
daily occupations in factory and workshop, mine and 
warehouse, circumscribed by State-made conditions, 
interpreted by Government departments and enforced 
in detail by official inspectors. The vigorous and 
compulsory intervention of the law between employer 
and employed — an intervention for which Liberal 
influences, both in legislation and in administration, 
have been chiefly responsible — has now proceeded to 
such lengths that " we find," as Mr. Morley says, " the y ^- 
rather amazing result that .in the country where 
Socialism has been less talked about than any other 
country in Europe, its principles have been most 
extensively applied." 

On this claim of "Socialism" to regard as so 
many applications of "its principles'* every inter- 
ference of Parliament with the conditions of labour, 
there is much that might be said. The word 
" Socialism " is itself fast losing all claim to be an 
instrument of value in political investigation ; it is 
meeting the fate which awaits most popular abstrac- 
tions — the more familiar it becomes as a phrase, the 
less definite it grows as an idea. It is true, no doubt, 
that in the sphere of Labour l^slation there is a 
large field where State interference is approved alike 
by the scientific Socialist and by the Liberal who 
retains to the full a belief in the old principles of his 
party. But this coincidence is no more than a casual 
agreement, and it is entirely gratuitous to assume 



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112 Liberals and Labour. 

that reforms which both schools of theorists are 
agreed to welcome can be justified only from the 
Socialistic point of view. To the Socialist (who. 
appears hardly to recognise any qualitative difference 
between the municipalisation of a natural monopoly 
and of an ordinary competitive trade) every regula- 
tion controlling the conditions under which the 
artisan competes for his wage is a step towards the 
abolition of competition ; to the Liberal, on the 
contrary, it is a step towards the adjustment of 
surroundings without which competition is but a 
mockery. The individualist does not renounce his 
faith in individuality because he is ready to abolish 
" contracting-out," and because he desires stringent 
factory inspection ; he still believes in the all-import- 
ance to the workman of free choice, and sees in the 
statutory regulation of industry only an attempt to 
secure to manual workers something better than a free 
choice between employment under improper condi- 
tions and no employment at all. When, for instance, 
Mr. Balfour defends, in the name of individual liberty, 
an arrangement which permits employes, in return 
for some form of consideration, to forego their title to 
compensation from the employer in whose service 
they may be injured, he not only ignores the repeated 
and unanimous desires of the men, as expressed by 
their own organisations, but he entirely misses the 
point of Mr. Asquith's Bill. It is precisely because 
no individual liberty is, as a matter of fact, left to the 



( 



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The Paradox Defended. 113 

workman under the existing law, that a new one is 
imperatively demanded. " The trade unionists assert " 
— we have it on an authority which, for combined en- 
thusiasm and knowledge, is without a rival in this 
country — "that the workman's consent to forego his 
legal claim is given practically uiider duress, since a 
man applying for employment has no free option 
whether or not he will join the firm's benefit society, 
and so relieve his employer from that pecuniary 
inducement to guard against accidents which the Act 
was intended to afford." ^ 

While, however, the Liberal may join hands with 
the Socialist in securing certain definite applications 
of legal restriction in the sphere of industry, he 
cannot act from the same motives and with the 
same ideals in view. Even when aiming at the same 
change in the law, the object to be attained is widely 
different. Face to face with the undisputed fact that 
real freedom of choice may be denied to the in- 
dividual workman while it is enjoyed by the capitalist 
employer, the Libersd aims at redressing the balance 
by some very different means than the desperate 
method of annihilating freedom of choice altogether. 
The proper regulation of industry by law is only 
an extension of the principle of collective bargaining : 
just as a trades-union may maintain a minimum rate 

of wages by associating all its members in one com- 

.J 

^ Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, in the Progressivt Review^ 
Jan., 18^, p. 345. 
I 



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114 Liberals and Labour, 

bined demand, so the law of the land may lay down an 
inferior limit for conditions of employment, in the name 
of a whole class of workers, which every separate 
unit is anxious to secure, but which cannot be es- 
tablished at all without being guaranteed to everyone 
alike. Liberal principle is not sacrificed by the 
adoption of enactments which add the emphasis of law 
to the reasonable demands of the weaker citizens in 
their dealings with the stronger. State interference 
in such cases does not limit the reality of free choice ; 
it confirms the workman's claim to be heard in the 
striking of a bargain where he would otherwise 
negotiate at an unjust advantage. From this point 
of view law is expressive, not impressive : it records, 
in a form that cannot be disregarded, certain of the 
stipulations of a contracting party in the industrial 
compact, but it does not at all attempt to import 
into the bargain conditions which limit freedom of 
choice in directions in which it can be reasonably 
exercised. While retaining his hold on the idea of 
individuality, as secure from external restraints, the 
Liberal admits the interaction of character and en- 
vironment, and does not hesitate to give up some 
psychological shadow of freedom for its material 
reality. In optics, what is lost in area illuminated 
may be gained in intensity of illumination ; and in 
politics, what is lost in the theoretic field for ex- 
ercising free choice is sometimes gained in the 
concentrated power of realising what is chosen. 



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Thr Ethical Standpoint, 115 

The object of the preceding pages has been to 
make some examination into the ideas which should 
inspire Liberals in dealing with " labour " problems, 
— with those questions which touch most directly 
the daily lives and occupations of working men. 
This examination has been conducted rather from 
an ethical than from an economic standpoint, rather 
with a view to investigating the effects of industrial 
regulation upon character than upon wealth. These 
twin aspects of social development cannot, of course, 
ever be really isolated ; every variation in environ- 
ment has its hidden counterpart in mental dis- 
position, as surely as the passage of electric currents 
in a helix of wire affects the molecular constitution 
of the iron bar within it But subjective and 
objective change, though they never occur save as 
closely associated phenomena, may well be dis- 
sociated in discussion, and with all the greater 
advantage, because the double point of view has 
not always been justly appreciated by CoUectivists. 
It may be easy and attractive to devise plans for a 
wholesale revolution in the conditions of employ- 
ment; it may be no less attractive to attempt a 
defence of such a revolution by some paradox in 
economics ; but it is a thankless and painful task 
to estimate, step by step, the subtle changes in 
individual character which might be expected to 
accompany these external upheavals. Signs, indeed, 
are not wanting that a few thoughtful Socialists 

I 2 



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ii6 Liberals and Labour, 

are realising the danger of devoting to the machinery 
of life an enthusiastic attention which is denied to 
its spirit But this danger, though dimly appre- 
hended by some of the intellectual leaders of 
Socialism, is not satisfactorily met by them — and, 
indeed, it cannot be met at all, so long as the 
communistic hypothesis is maintained. Meanwhile 
the mass of Socialistic opinion in this country is 
absolutely ignorant of the fact that any such danger 
is inherent in their schemes, and Mr. Keir Hardie 
cheerfully proclaims a policy of universal nationalisa- 
tion without being troubled with any misgivings as 
to the effects of the abolition of competition upon 
the inner life of the workers. 

With the economic aspect of competition, let us 
repeat, the present essay has nothing to do. It is 
concerned with that side of social questions which 
is none the less important because it is difficult 
accurately to grasp, which does not lend itself to 
statistical treatment, and which cannot be reduced 
to a question of profit and loss ; but which, never- 
theless, is so subtly intertwined with the roots of 
social life that Socialists are misled into ignoring 
its significance altogether. It is in their appreciation 
of this "ethical" aspect of social problems and 
remedies that true Liberals and ordinary Socialists 
stand absolutely opposed. To the former, civic 
individuality is so important a factor in well-being 
that the interference of the State is only tolerable 



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Socialism and Character. 117 

where it promotes real freedom of choice by sub- 
stituting legal restriction for the harsher tyranny 
of unequal circumstance ; to the latter, the free play 
of private wills is to be swamped in a Utopia where 
all forms of competition are in themselves an evil, 
and a complete system of State regulation is elevated 
to the position of an absolute good. Between these 
two standpoints there is a great gulf fixed; if we 
abandon the loose language of common enthusiasms 
and seek for principles instead of catch-words, we 
shall find that ultimately there is nothing in 
common between, the Socialistic and Liberal idea. 
This is an unpleasant truth which neither party 
has thoroughly grasped — a truth which always tends 
to be obscured by a common recognition of the 
injustice of unrestricted competition, and by a 
common belief in the efficacy of certain legislative 
remedies. The Socialist, who mistakes identity of 
treatment for identity of diagnosis, may find it 
difficult to understand why a principle which pro- 
motes the stringent inspection of all workshops will 
not countenance the public ownership and manage- 
ment of all workshops ; to him these two proposals 
are two parallel applications of a single idea, and 
he convicts the Liberal who discriminates between 
them of a want of courage to carry out to a logical 
end the principle underlying the Factory Acts. 
Such a condemnation entirely misses the spirit of 
industrial legislation, as it is understood by Liberals ; 



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ii8 Liberals and Labour, 

and amid such suspicions of unworthy compromise 
it is more than ever necessary to remove from our 
policy the taint of opportunism, and to make it 
clear that our principles not only justify certain 
advances in industrial reform, but also provide a 
definite limit to its direction and scope. 

Now, the Liberal attitude to working men's ques- 
tions is determined, as has already been said, by a 
reference to two main ideas — to the idea of freedom 
as secured by the absence of legal restraint upon one's 
own private choice, and to the idea of freedom as 
secured by the imposition of legal restraint upon 
others, or rather upon the community at large, in 
one's own private interest In so far as a truly wise 
policy lies intermediate between these two extremes, 
we may call the Liberal attitude one of compromise, 
and we may admit that every case for State inter- 
ference must be decided on its individual merits. 
But this is not to say that the Liberal must roam at 
large between these two fixed boundaries without any 
materials for guidance better than the exigencies of 
the moment. His object is not merely to pick the 
path of least resistance between the impassable heights 
of Individualism on the one hand, and the treacherous 
quagmires of Socialism on the other. At the very 
moment when he appears to be abandoning ideals in 
a compromise between opposing tendencies, he is 
really applying to the solution of concrete difficulties 
a higher principle which gives dignity to compromise. 



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No Compromise, 119 

and unites tendencies seemingly opposed in the direc- 
tion of a common end. We may apply to politics 
what Aristotle says of ethics, that, regarded according 
to the definition of its nature, virtue is a middle state, 
but viewed in its relation to what is best and right, it 
is the extreme of perfection. In other words, the two 
ideas which we have found to lie at the base of the 
Liberal view of industrial questions are not really 
opposed ; they are not divergent ideals which the 
practical politician must equally renounce when he 
deserts speculation for electioneering, and uses his 
Principles (with a big P) in the manufacture not of a 
policy but of a peroration. Even the details of a 
sound programme must have a strictly theoretic justi- ^ 
fication ; and it is only by retaining a grasp on the / 
theory that the practice of politics can be elevated 
from the meanest of trades to the noblest of public 
activities. 

An illustration suggested by contemporary politics 
will make this more clear. The recent history of 
employers' liability will show at once the twin ten- 
dencies which are to be traced in all Liberal reform, 
and the unifying principle which reconciles an appa- 
rent opposition of ideals. Mr. Asquith's Bill consisted 
essentially of two points: it proposed, in the first 
place, to abolish the doctrine of common employ- 
ment ; and in the second place, to prohibit all 
agreements between masters and workmen to " con- 
tract out " of the provisions of the law. Here are 



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120 LiBBkALS AND LABOUR, 

two reforms, each ui^ently demanded by working 
men, and each fully included in the scope of one 
Government Bill. Yet the first proposal asserts a 
principle which seems expressly denied by the second. 
In declaring the fiction of "common employ- 
ment" to be no longer recognised by law, we ane 
removing a pettifogging restriction which limits the 
individual rights of the artisan ; we are asserting his 
claim to such treatment at the hands of his employer 
as is the due of every other citizen who crosses his 
path; we are securing to the mill-hand that com- 
pensation for injury to which he would always have 
been entitled if he had not happened to be in receipt 
of wages from the mill-owner in whose service he has 
been maimed; we are abolishing that parody of 
equity by which the workman, injured in. the actual 
performance of his daily occupation, may be denied 
the damages conceded to the chance passer-by. Such 
a reform in the law is an obvious application of the 
principle that the relations of master and employ^ 
shall not be controlled by exceptional legislation ; it 
puts the workman in the position already occupied 
by the rest of the world with regard to the employer's 
liability for accidents caused by any of his servants, 
and delivers him from the ill-judged interference of 
the State in his dealings with the holders of capital. 

But the refusal to recognise an undertaking given 
by a workman to forego his rights to compensation 
for injury, in return for some consideration, appears 



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Employers' Lr ability. 121 

to embody a very different principle. At first sight, 
it looks as if Mr. Asquith's Bill, while restoring to 
the artisan his rights as an ordinary free citizen by 
abolishing " common employment,*' is depriving him 
of his newly secured status by abolishing " contracting 
out" The reasons which unite Liberal opinion in 
support of the seeming paradox have been already 
indicated No " Tory democrat " who helped (in the 
interests, forsooth, of the very workmen whose organ- 
isations he abused and whose wishes he ignored ! ) to 
destroy Mr. Asquith's Bill has ever attempted to depy 
that many thousands of workmen have been compelled 
to contract out of the Act through fear of losing their 
employment, and that tens of thousands have had to 
surrender their own choice on finding that such an 
understanding is an invariablecondition of engagement. 
To speak of the " sacred right of free contract " 
under such unequal circumstances is, as Mr, Asquith 
said, a "pure and unadulterated imposture," and 
neither Mr. Balfour's ingenuity nor the House of 
Lords' obstinacy can persuade working men that 
the boon of contracting out is anything better than 
the sham which a long series of Trades Union 
Congresses have declared it to be. Thus the limit- 
ation of the common-law right of contract is 
necessary to secure to the workman the full benefits 
of the common-law right of compensation for in- 
jury. The two parts of Mr. Asquith's Bill involve no 
contradiction; they may appear to be applications 



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122 Liberals and Labour. 

of different, even of contradictory, principles, and 
yet behind both lies a single simpk idea. Alike 
in the abolition of " common employment " and in 
the abolition of " contracting out " we have the same 
object in view — to relieve the workman from the 
disabilities of his surroundings, legal and material ; 
to expose the heartless cant which would represent 
the employer as a purchaser of lives and limbs as 
well as of labour, and the employ^ as a " free agent " 
when he is only free to choose between submission 
and starvation ; in a word, to vindicate the right of 
every artisan to live as a citizen — not to exist as a 
machine — in the enjoyment of that self-respect and 
self-reliance which can only be secured by immunity 
from the restrictions alike of unequal conditions and 
of inequitable law.^ 

Thus the fundamental idea at the base of all 
wise industrial legislation becomes clear. It is not 
loss of principle, it is not love of paradox, that has 
induced the wiser school of individualist Liberals 



* The present state of the law was explained with characteristic 
clearness by Mr. Asquith at Dewsbory, on January 8, 1S97 : — *' If a 
third person who is not in my employ is injured by the negligent act of 
any servant of mine, I am held responsible to the uttermost farthing of 
the damages he may sustain ; but if the injured person happens to be a 
working man in my employment, although I might be supposed to be 
under some obligation to take special care of his safety • . , he 
cannot recover a single halfpenny." Mr. and Mrs. Webb have pointed 
out that the case upon which this view of the law is based (Priestley v. 
Fowler, 1837) is now considered by some eminent authorities to have 
been wrongly decided. 



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Free Choice secured by Law. 123 

to put forward proposals for extensive State inter- 
ference with some of the conditions of labour. The 
true Liberal has never denied that under our modern 
system of industry the wage-earning unit will be 
unequally matched in his struggle with the huge 
forces of capitalism, until the community throws 
itself on the side of the weaker combatant. But to 
admit this is not to denounce industrial competition ; 
it is only to insist that the . conditions of such com- 
petition, wherever prejudiced by serious inequalities 
of wealth or influence, shall first be equalised by 
Parliamentary action. Factory Acts and Employers' 
Liability Acts do not indicate any surrender of the 
old principles of individual liberty; they only ex- 
press the truth that when immunity from State 
control does not (and it often does not) really 
secure unrestricted choice, it is. better for restraint 
to be exercised by the community at large in the 
public interest, than by the predominant class in 
its own private interest. Legislative interference 
with industrial conditions is, as it were, a homoeo- 
pathic remedy, applied with the ultimate object of 
correcting the baneful influence of external coercion 
which it seems itself to embody. On the possibility of 
free choice the workman's self-respect is based. True, 
but that free choice is not to be secured by isolation 
amid hostile surroundings in an anarchic community ; 
to be worth having, free choice must be translated 
into power to effect our choice ; and in industrial no less 



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124 Liberals and Labour, 

than moral life, by means of the law we shall become 
free. 

It is no part of the design of this essay to draw 
out a detailed programme of industrial reform in 
accordance with the ideas on which emphasis has 
been laid. We are here concerned only with the 
logic of Labour legislation: we are advocating a 
method in politics which in these latter days has 
been neither effectively preached nor earnestly prac- 
tised. Our main object has been to insist that it is 
still possible to deduce a wise industrial policy, suited 
to present and future needs, from general principles ; 
what is essential is Ihat these principles should be 
firmly grasped and consistently applied. Of the 
nature of these principles much has already been 
said : they are not in themselves new, but they are 
capable of wide and novel application to present-day 
conditions. A true Liberal still holds " that Parlia- 
ment ought not to legislate on matters on which the 
people are, or reasonably ought to be, able to protect 
themselves. It ought not to enact what people shall 
do or shall not do in respect to self-regarding matters 
on which the people can fairly decide for themselves. 
In respect to social reforms and domestic concerns, 
the duty of Parliament is to interfere as little as 
possible, and only for the purpose of protecting 
health, life, or property, and preventing acts which 
are in the nature of crimes. Parliament should do 
nothing to lessen that spirit of self-reliance which 



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The Liberal Future. 125 

makes society progressive wherever it prevails,"^ 
These are wise words : the pity is that their proper 
application is so often misconceived. What wonder 
is it that embittered and ignorant artisans denounce 
the older Liberalism, when they hear its principles 
falsely invoked by harsh employers in defence of a 
selfish disregard of the duties of capital and of the 
hardships of labour ? And yet, rightly interpreted and 
honestly applied, these same principles are still potent 
to inspire and to justify a great industrial charter. 

'* What, then," the Socialist may be supposed to 
inquire, " is the prospect which these principles hold 
out to the labouring classes ? " No complete answer 
can be attempted here : it will be enough to indicate, 
positively and negatively, in merest outline, the path 
which the heirs of the Liberal tradition should pursue. 
Recognising the danger of serious inequalities in the 
distribution of wealth, they will boldly discriminate 
between the taxable abundance of the rich and 
the irreducible minimum of the poor ; but they will 
not check the stimulus to thrift by penalising the 
legitimate success which its exercise has achieved. 
Holding that environment and character are closely 
intertwined, they will invoke the aid of law to secure 
better conditions for industry ; but they will not 
imagine that factory inspection can make the un- 
employable efficient, or shorter hours make the idle 
industrious. Admitting the inability of a wage- 
^ Charles Bradlaugh's " Labour and Law," p. 31. 



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126 Liberals AND Labour, 

earner to maintain unassisted his just claims in his 
dealings with a wealthy paymaster, they will bring the 
influence of the community to the aid of the weaker 
party ; but they will not purchase complete inde- 
pendence from the control of individuals at the price 
of complete dependence on the dictation of the State. 
Believing that all free men should be equal in the 
control of their own lives no less than in the eye of 
the law, they will promote opportunities for individual 
choice by statutory restrictions upon the forces that 
oppose it; but they will refuse to regard as their 
ideal a society where all will be equally free because 
all will be equally enslaved. 

" But," the Tory may object, in his turn, " why 
claim a policy of steady and continuous industrial 
reform as the exclusive possession of the Liberal 
party? Has not Mr. Chamberlain a social pro- 
gramme ? Is not Mr. Balfour a champion of Tory 
democracy ? Are not you arrogating to yourself a 
sympathy with the worker and a desire to improve 
his lot which every honest man, be he Liberal or be 
he Conservative, has equally at heart ? " To such a 
criticism it is difficult to reply without the appearance 
of arrogance. Let us make a member of the present 
Tory Cabinet the scapegoat. " Can we forget," said 
the present Duke of Devonshire in 1885, "what is 
the composition of the Conservative party? Is it 
reasonable to suppose that the Conservative squires, 
by whose support the Tory party so largely exists. 



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Shortcomings of Toryism. 127 

really desire any radical and complete alteration in 
the Land Laws? Do they really desire legislation 
which is ainied at the breaking-up of those estates 
which it has hitherto been their pride to possess and 
to transmit from father to son, even if their families 
have become too impoverished to do justice to them ? 
Are we really to believe that the landlord and the 
clergyman anxiously and sincerely desire to divest 
theniselves of the power which they now exercise 
over the affairs of the country and the parish, and 
to hand it over to the selected representatives of the 
people ? Are we to believe that the publican interest, 
to which the Conservative party has hitherto owed so 
much, is really anxious that the power of granting 
licences and of dealing with licences should be trans- 
ferred from benches of magistrates to locally elected 
boards ? I must admit that I find it somewhat hard 
to believe these things, and I believe that whatever 
may be the promises which Conservative statesmen 
may make with the object of gaining power, whatever 
may be their, sincere conviction as to what ought to 
be done on these subjects, they will find great and 
insuperable difficulties, considering the men and the 
material of which their party is composed, in applying 
any adequate and complete solution to those diffi- 
culties which they themselves see." * 

Lord Hartington has changed more than his title. 
"Can we forget ? " he asked a dozen years ago : and 

^ Lord Hartington at Rawtenstall, October lO, 1885. 



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128 Liberals and Labour. 

the Duke of Devonshire has already forgotten. 
Unionism, it would seem, is the greatest of political 
virtues, for it covereth a multitude of sins. But this 
analysis of the essential shortcomings of Toryism has 
survived the recantation of its author. Inherent in 
the very constitution of the party lie the seeds of its 
weakness. What is true of its attitude towards the 
land, towards the Church, and towards the public- 
house, is doubly true of its attitude towards industrial 
questions. " Is it reasonable to suppose " — we may 
adopt the Duke of Devonshire's phrase — that the 
young bloods who attacked the Board of Trade for 
desiring to arbitrate in the Penrhyn quarries* dispute, 
can fairly estimate the justice of the claims of working 
men? "Are we really to believe "that Lord Salis- 
bury is willing and able to meet the fair demands of 
labour, when he denounces trades unions as "cruel 
oiganiisations " ? " Are we to believe " that workmen 
will obtain better security for life and limb from a 
party which puts the wishes of the North-Western 
Railway directors before the repeated desires of 
workers throughout the country ? 

It is needless to multiply illustrations. A party 
which is identified with liniited material interests, 
which adopts the standards of one prosperous class as 
its own, which represents the established order as the 
ideal order, and confuses the conventional with the 
normal, is necessarily prevented from grasping and 
developing an ideal policy for the industrial classes. 



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The Liberal Opportunity. 129 

It remains for Liberals, who have no special clients 
to serve and no special privileges to protect, to formu- 
late and carry out wise social reforms, which shall be 
as far removed from the spasmodic concessions of 
Tories on the one hand, as from the stereotyped 
officialdom of Socialists on the other. 

J. Allsebrook Simon. 



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«3i 



LIBERAUSM IN OUTWARD RELATIONS. 

I. Prevailing habit of English Character — Applied to General Politics — And 
more definitely to Foreign Tradition : (i) of abstaining from Criticism ; 
(2) of Mechanical Continuity — The Remedy — To evoke Public Feeling? 
— Armenian Agitation no true example — Crete compared — Fear of 
such Control a Tory motive — The Midlothian Campaign gives the 
Answer, II, National Morality — Two Postulates — Honour a motive 
of the State — The Jingo considered — (A reservation) — Analysed as a 
false expression of sound motives in the State — Illustration from the 
Individual — Late general reaction in this matter as elsewhere. III. 
Why are we unpopular in Europe? — Egypt— Foreign Suspicion 
of England someway justified^ Italy— Pan* Anglican Empire — ^The 
Empire as it is— Federation a welcome codifying of confused rela- 
tions — ^What is the Principle to guide Liberals in these Questions ? — 
Nationalism — Applied to Colonies — To Ireland — ^Further extended to 
Transvaal — A caution against misconstruction — Militarism of this 
Essay defended and specified — ^Legitimate spheres of War and Arbi- 
tration — England and U.S. A. — Democratic Control makes for genuine 
Continuity— France. IV. Party in Foreign Affairs : Has it any place? 
—Should Liberal Foreign Policy differ in direction as well as execu- 
tion ? — A modified Yes — How to elicit a Party direction — France 
again— Party sympathies an initiative — Party antipathies not by 
themselves determining till reinforced by national grudge — 
Germany — Italy — Dynastic influences dismissed. V. Greneral Re- 
suming Summary : Faults not coterminous with Liberalism — Political 
Shibboleths — Gear thinking and popular explanation— Feeling to be 
evoked — And directed— Jingoism and the other extreme — How we 
err — Democracy realised in Foreign Affairs — Its Aims suggested — 
Conclusion. 

CERTAIN English characteristics may be traced 
in operation throughout every corner and recess 
of national life ; conspicuous in politics, they are 
nowhere more signally exhibited than in the 
department of Foreign Affairs. Chief among these 
characteristics is that modified materialism which 
J 2 



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132 LiBBRAUSM IN OUTWARD RELATIONS. 

expresses itself in the English idolatry of the average 
or the middle course. We live, admire, think, and 
govern by rule of thumb. To the average every 
Englishman sets up the chief altar among his house- 
hold gods ; to this he offers up an unfailing sacrifice 
of compromises — compromises at every side and 
relation of life, in art, in thought, in religion, but, 
above all, in politics. Instances need not be multi- 
plied to prove the truth of a charge which most of us 
accept with satisfaction as a compliment, pointing 
with suitable pride to a long calendar of material 
successes as a decisive testimony to justify our habit 
In general politics the results of this rule are suffi- 
ciently evident in many of our most cherished 
institutions : no more palmary examples perhaps 
could be singled out for mention than the absence 
of a defined Constitution, and the system of Party 
Government 

Napoleon's dictum of the " nation of shopkeepers " 
might stand for the text of a sermon on the subject, 
and the homily might be pointed and embellished 
with abundant quotations gathered from any leading 
article in the Times on any subject, at any date, 
by any hand. It is perhaps the- greatest of national 
temptations, this truckling to the various bias in 
things: not the mind to master events and drive 
straight through material impediments, but rather 
to accept every kick from conflicting circumstances, 
which perverts you from your destined line as a hint 



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English Materialism. 133 

from actual nature to indicate the true course. And 
the true course — so far as material success can pro- 
claim it, or the consideration of past experience 
present that criterion — ^has lain unquestionably in 
that tortuous and fortuitous direction. To treat of 
the value and force of the reservation in this last 
sentence would betray us into alien fields of philo- 
sophical disquisition. Let us collect the fact that 
the English are profoundly, essentially illogical — a 
people which rejects with impatience, if not with 
contempt, any absolute truth or idea, any ideal, 
except in the sense in which the word has been 
incorporated into the mechanical and unmeaning 
claptrap of the stump orator from Cabinet Ministers 
downward ; any logic, except that beggarly assertion 
of " consistency " which sometimes relieves the hard- 
driven argiitnentum ad crumenam of its supremacy 
in political reasoning. This fact collected, we can 
proceed to its application to our special purpose in 
this essay. In practice it appears mainly in certain 
shapes, which may be generally formulated as Con- 
servatism where Conservatism is madness, and 
Radicalism where Radicalism is sacrilege. In com- 
mon politics, matters where " Time is the great 
reformerl' it is almost impossible to rouse a sluggish 
native Toryism to work against that reckless revolu- 
tionary : spontaneous degeneration escapes the 
general curse pronounced against change. 

But in things domestic, of the family, matters of 



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134 Liberalism in Outwahd Relations. 

sentiment, Tory hands are always readiest at the 
levers for subverting a consecrated order of things. 
Let only certain forms and husks be observed, 
and the modem revolutionary Conservative will 
stolidly or cynically deny that the spirit and 
kernel are there no more.^ Or, to bring it down 
to a more definite point still, our habit as a 
nation in national outward relations is apathetic 
unconsciousness; our golden rule in Foreign Policy 
IS tradition. First, the whole question of Foreign 
Affairs is traditionally viewed, accepted in a 
traditional setting ; secondly, the form of the 
answer is bound and determined by tradition. To 
take the first, let it not be supposed that this is 
mere discontented railing at the principle of con- 
tinuity in Foreign Policy; that, a matter to be 
presently considered more fully, is not here con- 
demned in anticipation. The complaint is this above 
all : that the tradition inculcates a general abstinence 
from foreign questions. These are enveloped in a 
mysterious halo to exclude the inspection of the 
public eye. They are represented as things beyond 
the common grasp— too slippery and elusive for 
anything but the dry tentacles of the professional 
diplomatist. We acquiesce. If ever our leaders and 

^ Between the writing and the printing of this sentence a perfect 
example has opportunely pointed the assertion with actuality. A Bill 
conferring suflfhfge on women passed its second reading by a majority 
of 71 — in a House of Commons containing a Conservative majority of 
150. A Parliament, Liberal by 40, rejected the thing in 1893. 



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Traditional Apathy. 135 

governors deign to speak of Foreign Affairs (Lord 
Rosebery, and others after his example, have lately 
signalised an exception), we are treated probably to 
some shadowy analogy for or against Irish Home 
Rule, drawn from Austrian examples imperfectly 
apprehended and appreciated, and still more im- 
perfectly interpreted to an audience bewildered but 
delighted. Or the orator, according to his political 
colour, declaims that " Russia is our enemy," or, " We 
need have no fear of Russia " ; " Turkey must be 
blotted out from the map of Europe," or, " We are 
prepared to justify and maintain the integrity of 
Turkey " ; and each dogma is swallowed, and either 
speaker applauded to the unintelligent echo. But 
that an English audience should ever have explained 
to it by one of the hierophants of this mysterious and 
esoteric caste, the Why and the Wherefore, any 
inkling of causes, conditions, principles, policies* 
even facts and figures, that it might be enabled 
to form its own judgment, and with understanding 
to approve or reject the judgment of others — that is 
more than is ever vouchsafed to us by the wiseacres 
of the occult science. Express this opinion to the 
farmer, the artisan, to the average English elector 
in whatever class he falls, and his answer will in- 
fallibly be, "We get on pretty well" — the unction 
usually laid to the easily flattered soul of Hand-to- 
mouth. Bread is distributed in the country, manu- 
factures go out freely, and raw materials return, 



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136 Liberalism in Outward kELATioNS. 

money moves — what can be wrong ? Now and then 
politicians tickle our ears with a luxurious suggestion 
of fear and danger from invasion ; and we run and 
vote a few more millions for ships. Politically we 
cannot believe it possible we may die to-morrow, 
because we eat and drink to-day. Not that this 
essay is meant to convey the least hint of an alarmist 
pessimism ; most likely we are nowhere near the 
verge of a catastrophe— only if we were, ninety-nine 
Englishmen out of a hundred would have heard 
nothing of it, know nothing of it, believe nothing 
of it. 

"We do pretty well as we are." Our political 
obscurantists play upon the weakness expressed in 
that smug refusal to reason, and they have powerful 
allies in the great difficulties of instruction either of. 
oneself or others. The man who reads no newspaper 
lives in the dark ; if he reads one only, he is at the 
mercy of a biased, inadequate, inaccurate distortion 
or selection of data. Read many newspapers, and 
you will obtain the satisfaction of gaining (over and 
above the knowledge of their insuffiency) only a criti- 
cally extracted modicum of trustworthy information. 

No specialist ever respected a newspaper's 
opinion in his own subject. Their influence is the 
proof and the measure of our ignorance. 

Few can travel, fewer still can travel to acquire 
this kind of knowledge. But certainly few weeks in 
a foreign country suffice to show the' traveller the 



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Jii^ » - "^^^f^m^ipmmmmsmma^^mfwi 



False Continuity. 137 

omissions to instruct and propensity to mislead of 
English foreign correspondents. When every Eng- 
lishman spins his own red tape, less many and less 
various embarrassments were necessary to keep us 
tied and bound in a passive ignorance coloured with 
the name of respect for tradition. 

Now to consider the second, passing from the 
limitation of opportunities for judgment to the tradi- 
tional limitations which enclose our view when 
formed. For many years past our foreign policy 
has carried the ^stamp of the fortuitous — a tangle of 
chances through which no main line of action has 
been traced. Chances land us in a particular situa- 
tion, and we stick there till other chances wash us 
down again. We never move, only counter-move; 
never seem to see ahead, to play the game on a com- 
prehensive system. Continuity becomes a dead nega- 
tion of principle, the consecration of opportunism. 

Certain powers, certain attitudes, combinations, 
designs of powers were a danger a generation ago. 
Certain friendships, certain acquisitions, certain posi- 
tions were then valuable. We continue to dread the 
dangers of the past, to prize the advantages of another 
epoch. The effects mesmerically follow the ghosts or 
shadows of causes actually vanished. We had an old 
quarrel with France ; therefore, the French rapproche- 
ment is contrary to nature and impossible. A clique 
of one-idea*d enthusiasts in certain provinces of 
thought and learning, taught us that we were all 



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138 Liberalism in Outward Relations. 

Germans together, by blood, by language, by 
character, and deluded us into glorying in our partial 
and remote connection with, perhaps, the most un- 
civilised of the nations in Western Europe ; therefore 
through all temporary strains {amantium ira) we 
must hold fast by the great "natural tie" with Ger- 
many, content to see ourselves thwarted and out- 
witted, because it is by the jealousy and dislike of 
cousins. Disraeli, possessed by an Orientalism which 
Western civilisation has generally agreed to call vul- 
garity, hated Russia, and shrank from the prospect 
of Constantinople as an outpost of the West in the 
East, a seat of Christian empire ; therefore, while 
other terrors wax and wane, the bugbear of danger 
from Russia dominant on the Golden Horn (and 
vulnerable from the Mediterranean) remains too 
obtuse for any light of scepticism to penetrate. 
Learn nothing, forget nothing: that is continuity. 

If that is the complaint, where must the remedy 
be sought ? Whence must we seek to add the note 
of the masterly, the imperial, the greatly conceived, 
to our pottering feebleness.? A great statesman 
could do it: but they are bred at intervals of 
centuries. Statesmen of the second order could do 
it if given a motive power, if charged with com- 
municated forces. In fact, the spirit of the timorous 
trustee of political infancy must give place to the 
confidence of the plenipotentiary representative of 
rational citizens. Responsibility once defined, loses 



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Public Feeling. 139 

half its anxious burden. Create a public feeling in 
foreign affairs ; let Englishmen at large have a voice in 
deciding whether they will label themselves "splen- 
didly isolated," or deliberately take a part in Europe. 
Is this possible? The late Armenian agitation in 
England was no example, as being (where genuine) 
essentially unpolitical — much like the attempts of 
the very uneducated audience of a melodrama to 
lynch the villain: an enthusiasm scarcely to be 
classed with dramatic criticisms. If an issue, plainly 
political^ were to be presented to the English people 
by some fresh turn in the struggle against Turkish 
misrule, the case would be different A proposal to 
incorporate Crete or Macedonia with Greece would 
furnish a fair example.* The Conservative party has 
foreseen the possibility of a public opinion being 
cast and trained to bear on external questions ; and 
probably no other cause (excepting the adaptive 
appetite of place-hunting) has been more efficient 
for the incorporation of clipped Liberalism in the 
Tory programme, than the hope that by fully dis- 
tracting the people with local government and 
parochial concerns they will be able still to prey 
securely on the direction of foreign policy, that choice 
last preserve for administration practised as a sport. 
The allusion to the late Armenian agitation intro- 

^ Where events succeed each other with rapid change from day to 
day, no correction could bring this sentence up to date. Actuality of 
detail, greater or le&s, does not affect its function in the argument. — 
February^ 1897. 



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I40 LiBERAUSM iN OUTWARD RELATIONS. 

duces the question : Why has a great uprising of 
popular feeling been possible, if not on this occasion, 
at least on an occasion presenting certain obvious 
analogies? Why were Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian 
speeches in 1879 punctuated by the applause of 
thousands night after night, and echoed by the en- 
thusiastic approbation of millions of readers on each 
morrow? The answer may be drawn from .the 
dictum of a great historical and constitutional lawyer: 
" In matters of the head the people are always wrong* 
in matters of the heart always right." Paring down 
the picturesque overstatement, you have a great truth 
left. And not only are the people right in matters of 
the heart: in those matters alone they form an 
opinion, right or wrong. But every great question 
of foreign policy, rightly represented, can be made 
to appeal to the heart, and not merely treated as a 
subject for the intellect. It is a Liberal's duty to see 
that this face of great issues is turned to the elec- 
torate. There is a manner in which dry alternatives 
of alliance or isolation, of closer or colder diplomatic 
relations with this or that Power, can be made to wear 
an aspect of tangible humanity. Englishmen can be 
taught to see that they are not dealing with an 
unrealisable impersonal parcel of diplomats and 
chancellery officials, but with a nation, a vast body 
of men of like passions with themselves.^ 

^ It is worth while just naming in a note some few other occasions 
when England has been thrilled throughout to a lively sense of sympathy 



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Expert Obscurantism. 141 

Then representative government will have pene- 
trated the last fortified corner of privileged adminis- 
tration. It has not been sufficiently recognised that 
the supercilious peevishness of the expert who de- 
precates criticism is perhaps the most powerful of the 
defences of privilege in administration. Nobody- 
grudges the experts their monopoly of technicalities, 
but they must not be allowed to fence the whole 
subject off from consideration by putting these forward 
to disarm critics. The importance of technicalities 
can be restricted and defined, and the matter presented 
as a system of large plain questions, to be dressed, 
and adapted, and applied afterwards as the experts 
choose. But to the people these questions must go 
in principle, presented in the form best calculated 
to elicit the popular judgment. To get at the general 
mind you must touch the general feelings — in fact, 
play through the heart on the head. 

The argument has led to another question, far too 
large and intricate to be here included and treated. 
It has been assumed in the last paragraph that a 
State has feelings ; and we are landed in that vexed 
region of dispute, the morality of nations. Here it 
must suffice to dogmatise summarily: — (i) the posi- 
tion that the existence of international law and 
comity is proof that there is some kind of inter- 
in foreign matters — the year 1S4S; the American Civil War; the 
unification of Italy in all its stages — leaving the moral to appear of 
itself in support of the general argument. 



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142 Liberalism in Outward Relations. 

national morality; and (2) the reservation that in 
pursuing the analogy between morality in the in- 
dividual and in the State, we must stop short of all 
moral feelings which are not essentially personal. 
That is, all such morality as in the individual is 
consciously sanctioned or actively motived by his 
membership of a community, is inapplicable to a 
State ; because a State can be merged in no larger 
unit except the unsubstantial, visionary society of a 
Cosmopolis, a " Federation of Mankind " : a term is 
wanting to the proportion, making calculation im- 
possible. But the springs of personal morality are 
present in the State equally. The whole body of 
citizens is capable at least of the passions of friend- 
ship, hatred, sympathy, jealousy; and shares in the 
sensations of pride and humility, collective strength 
and common weakness. All which might almost 
be summed by saying that honour among States 
exists. Citizenship is not the justification of honour 
in the individual ; nor can the non-existence of world- 
citizenship exclude it from the State. 

A phrase has here directly confronted us with 
an objection, apparently powerful, towards which the 
argument had verged before. A good Liberal may 
be scared by the free assertion of the, existence of 
honour in the State into protesting "This is flat 
Jingoism.'* And in this place we may most ap- 
propriately consider the causes, the nature, and the 
remedies of that disease. For a disease it is most 



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Jingoism, 143 

surely : a perversion of certain natural tendencies, a 
misrepresentation of certain motive feelings ; in its 
essence a kind of vicarious boasting, conceit upon 
resources not your own. A Jingo speaks with the 
same personal pride of our "irresistible fleet" and 
" overflowing Treasury " that a vulgarian in a minor 
field might display in telling what a big balance he 
has in the bank, or how high, richly gilt, and im- 
penetrable are the iron railings round his newly 
purchased park. But the vulgarity is not equally 
condemned as offensive in the two cases. And the 
matter may be explored a stage deeper by asking 
the question. Why the fat, unwarlike little man who, 
from the security of a home which he has no in- 
tention of quitting for perils and adventures, expends 
imaginary millions, sweeps the seas with paper fleets, 
paints whole contuients and territories red in his 
mind's atlas, beards all the Powers of Europe single- 
handed, is treated as anything else but a comic 
braggart ? ^ Why, when we hear a man asserting 
the destined right of the Anglo-Saxon race to possess 
the world, and proclaiming the infallible superiority 
of an Englishman over two Frenchmen, three 
Prussians, five Spaniards, and so on ad libitum, do 
we not with one consent write him down an ass, if 
possible convey to his notice what we have written, 

^ To refer to the locus classicus of the nickname Jingo : ** Wf donU 
want to fight y but by Jingo ifvrt do," eta The words italicised^ rightly 
viewed, have considerable humour. 



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144 Liberalism in Outward Relations. 

and have done with it ? (It is only right to preface 
that the creature sits on both sides of the House, 
discredits both parties in so far as he is identified 
with them. For the purposes here treated, it is 
the same whether a Jingo proclaims the belief that a 
nation is an armed mission organised for spiritual 
purposes, or a joint-stock company for the acquisi- 
tion by all means of the greatest possible area ;of 
landed property while imposing itself as a divinely 
appointed oligarchy administering a world of in- 
feriors). 

The answer is : because he is a ludicrous repre- 
sentative of instincts, sentiments, aspirations in them- 
selves essentially sound, natural and wholesome ; 
ludicrous, but the only representative — a grotesque 
caricature where we have no portrait. That fact alone 
lends him any strength or importance, and it may at 
certain seasons lend him effectual strength and 
determining importance. As you might say, we have 
no safety valve but this steam-whistle. What, then, 
are these elements of national character which find 
a mutilated and distorted expression through the 
Jingo? 

A nation is sick or decaying in which the pride 
and satisfaction in its own strength and resources are 
dormant or extinct. Patriotism divorced from the 
military instincts becomes a nominal, academic 
shadow ; though these may express themselves sane 
or corrupted, in chivalry or in brutality. The feeling 



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Misrepresented Patriotism, 145 

which, if not continually effective, at least stirs in the 
heart of an Englishman who beholds a great English 
fleet or a body of English troops ; who reads of some 
courageous behaviour of an Englishman ; who meets 
a British blue-jacket in a strange port, or hears " God 
Save the Queen " played in a foreign country : that is 
a natural, honest and creditable feeling. And for 
some time past it has been sneered at and suppressed, 
till no outlet was left it but the pitiful frothings of the 
Jingo. It was a familiar butt for the type of man 
whose ideals in life are a good dinner and a bad 
novel : as expressed by the Jingo, a legitimate butt ; 
though such criticisms justly did as much to re- 
habilitate the true spirit they attacked under a false 
and shoddy form, as the falsity and shoddiness had 
done to discredit it 

Similarly the sense of pride and exultation in 
physical strength is a sane and healthy attribute 
in the individual, but for more than a generation in 
England it has been misdirected into a coarse and 
trivial athleticism. An outlet was necessary ; and the 
natural outlet was not opened to it — a temperate, 
organised, rational military feeling in the individual. 
Thus, as the ideal of sport has been trodden and 
obliterated under the heel of the professional, so the 
more real forms of patriotism — the elevating sense of 
collective prestige and honour— have been destroyed 
by the Jingoes who stole and abused the representa- 
tion of them. Meanwhile the causing mischief has 
K 



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146 Liberalism m Outward Relations. 

abated. Of late we have s^en a g^reat r^iction against 
the prevalence of the horsewhipped frame of mind 
as a substitute for sensitive patriotism. Here, as 
elsewhere, signs are not wanting nor obscure to prove 
that we are upon the threshold of a new epoch — an 
epoch of which perhaps the prevailing note will be a 
return to natural sanity from a number of morbid 
perversions and exaggerations in every direction of 
life. And these are just the times wheait is of crucial 
importance to declare that the true wprk of Liberalism 
is not to cry "Progress," and reel blindly without 
fixed aim or direction, caring only to move, but the 
progressive (one might more safely write continuous 
or successive) adaptation to permanent established 
ideals — ideals presented elsewhere in this book in 
their most tangible and real shape as the normal.^ 
We must not be afraid to be told that our Liberalism 
is turned reactionary, if by principle it has steadied 
from its opportunist shiftings ; we may pull with our 
faces set astern, but the boat goes ahead. 

We have been witnesses of a potent, almost 
imiversal change of opinion, in the matter of arma* 
ments : potent, for it has given us an enormously 
increased fleet ; almost universal, for no party has 
protested s^ainst a movement which all fdt to. 
originate deeper thaa party oppositions and differ- 

^ It is perhaps hardly necessary even to hint a caution against 
confusing the normal (the ideal, as simply expressed by sane instinct) 
and the average, as considered earlier in this essay. 



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English Unpopularity. 147 

ences dare to penetrate. This change in the public 
mind, this new spirit with its manifested powers, is at 
present common property, unenclosed ground ; the 
duty of the Liberal party, as the desire of every 
party, must be to capture it, appropriate this material 
for its own impress; adopt, guide, and direct this 
impetus on the lines of its own principles. The 
Jingo must not seize it ; and the more precise, con- 
scious and articulate this vague groping instinct 
towards a reformation .becomes, the less the Jingo is 
to be feared. 

Because he is the weakest point we offer to critics 
without, it is an easy transition from the analysis of 
the Jingo to a consideration of the foreigner's view of 
England. The important question, " Why are we 
unpopular in Europe.?" is worth asking yet again. 
Recent events abroad, with the stirring of some' 
recent ideas on foreign policy at home, have caused it 
to be asked often enough, but always to be answered i 
with a smug impenitent satisfaction. Hypocrisy is 
so much the besetting sin of the race, that it is all; 
but against nature for an Englishman in any public, 
position quite to divest himself of the Pharisee. Xb^ 
pretext, pharisaically alleged, justly increasesj the.^ 
odium it sets up to account for. It was not pleasant 
reading for foreigners when they saw us proclaiopking 
ourselves unpopular from our very strength and 
merits. Nor was it true ; or, if true, a comparativeiy 
small part of the truth. Other factors are far more 
K 2 



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148 LlBERAUSM IN OUTWARD RELATIONS. 

in cause. We are a selfish Power ; but all Powers are 
that. What statesman dares to be altruistic at his 
clients* expense? But we practise our selfishness 
under the most elaborate forms of deception, with a 
hypocrisy so intimately radical in our very national 
fibre, that we deceive no one so much as ourselves. 
Why are we still in Egypt ? The truth is, because 
we wish to control the Suez Canal, increase our 
prestige in the world, fortify our position in the 
Mediterranean. But that is not the answer ninety- 
nine Englishmen out of a hundred will give you: 
" Because we have a great work for civilisation to do 
in Egypt; because we have introduced justice, sol- 
vency, prosperity, stability to a country where these 
luxuries of the West had been unknown." Your 
apologist's heart warms as he recounts it, and it 
becomes more than ever impossible for him to 
analyse his motives to the bottom. The natural 
passion in every Englishman cries out so strongly for 
order and administration, that he really believes in 
his divine right to step in wherever there is mis- 
management or confusion, and establish his ideal — a 
good, going business concern. To set any other con- 
siderations against that is doctrinaire pedantry to 
him. If Continental Powers suggest that observance 
of pledges comes before even the right of seizing to 
run at a profit what others could only run at a loss, 
that must bfe their ridiculous jealousy of our talents 
for government. 



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Motives of Policy. 149 

Interest is the motive of national policy ; every 
nation acknowledges it, some with sincerity, some 
under pretences. But the grievance of the world 
against us is not only the uncandid allegation of 
other springs of action ; partly also it is the meanness 
of our conception of our interest. Here, as elsewhere, 
we have mistaken economics for morals; the more 
idealist our judges, the greater the crime appears. 
Our heart is so habitually in our breeches* pocket, 
that when by some curious anomaly of character a 
genuinely unselfish enthusiasm takes us, foreigners 
not unnaturally suspect that more sinister considera- 
tions are in the background. The commercial 
traveller turned knight-errant can hardly complain 
of suspicions that he means to hit the fair lady in 
distress for a commission. Our conception of interest 
is mean, because it does not include goodwill and 
prestige among advantages to be sought for in the first 
place. Yet consider the striking example of Italy — 
the one people in Europe which has a real affection 
for us, affection expressing itself in every imaginable 
form, from literary sympathies (of long standing these) 
to the good word spoken in our favour by every 
Italian, from prince to cabman. Where does the 
affection come from } Two men, more than any 
other cause, we have to thank for the kindly feelings 
of our Mediterranean ally : Palmerston and Glad- 
stone — two men and a warm outburst of popular 
enthusiasm rare enough in a foreign question. 



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ISO Liberalism in Outward Relations. 

Common " interests *' we have, undoubtedly ; but 
"interests" are weak to produce such strong and 
sure friendship, Italy is the one European power 
to whom we have done unselfish service, giving help 
in exchange for neither money nor provinces. Ser- 
vices actuated by disinterested enthusiasm have 
repaid themselves in their own coin ; there alone 
there would be a responsive outburst of popular 
feeling in our favour were we to be involved in a 
danger, or threatened by a calamity. That is an 
alliance not in the sense of a business contract 
between Governments, but a union between peoples. 
Personal feeling is operative in masses : the same 
factor that makes the Dual Alliance incalculably 
stronger than the Triple — at least, for all purposes 
short of the actual battlefield. That, surely, is a 
consideration which may be urged without the 
reproach of desecrating business matters with 
sentiment. 

Indeed, we do profess at times and in certain refer- 
ences, motives larger and more honourable, at any 
rate in scale, than our business interests. Certain 
enthusiasts talk of the triumph of the Anglo-Saxon 
race, and look forward to a day when the whole world 
shall speak English. The state of mind of these 
prophets is almost too humiliating to conceive ; and 
the theory is based on numerical futilities — calcula- 
tions which if made three centuries ago in regard to 
our own day, would certainly have given a result 



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Empire. 151 

ludicrously discrepant from the present actual event : 
a test too rarely applied to them, unhappily.^ 
But nothing is too foolish to be worth consider- 
ing in an adversary ; and in consideration of this 
view we may fitly introduce a few words upon 
two important topics — the Empire and the Na- 
tional Principle. Before we speak of the English 
xace possessing the earth it is well to reflect what 
we mean by our terms — ^if one may employ such 
an unprophetic method. People talk wildly, as ff 
the small English element in the hybrid hordes 
which occupy the vast territories of the United States 
of America entitled us to rank them as within the 
field of dominion of the English race : the empire of 
a race is a very different thing, a master-people 
powerfully, by government and civilisation, training 
kindred successors to itself — like Rome. The Eng- 
lish genius is rather colonising than imperial ; in 
Canada the English become every year more 
American, the French remain French, What a 
difference between a Romanised Gaul, or Briton, 
and an Anglicised Hindu ! To be permanently fruit- 
ful empire demands two conditions — ^grcat superiority 

^ What, for example, would a calculating prophet in Elizabeth's 
time have foretold as the state of Europe, even in population alone, 
Aree centuries ahead ? Or even fifty years ago, as the state of the 
Far East to-day? Thmk of Petty's forecast of London I Mr. John 
Morley admirably described prophecy as the most gratuitous form of 
mistake ; if so, prophecy by the ready-reckoner is certainly the most 
wanton form of blander. 



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152 Liberalism in Outward Relations. 

of one civilisation among races not too remotely akin 
to assimilate. Empire in the true sense of the 
word — it is well to repeat the truth — we have not 
so much : colonies are not properly an empire. 
The French foreign possessions, of which we speak 
with a truly British judgment as " not paying," " not 
successful," are an empire, a France extended over 
seas. Precisely the importance of the movement 
towards Imperial Federation lies in this, that it would 
mean a rational codifying of our present confused 
federal relations with Greater Britain, such as would 
give the whole body a good many of the advantages 
of an empire. We now combine a curious com- 
promise between the two: a compromise, as usual, 
symptomatic of looseness, not to say absence, of 
thinking and indefiniteness of intention. Indeed, only 
a large and precise principle can co-ordinate the big 
unwieldy material of the question* It is to be sought 
in a clear idea of main purpose. The work of a nation in 
the world is not to colour maps red rather than yellow, 
and indefinitely accumulate noughts at the end of the 
figure of its revenue, but to express at its highest 
perfection its national type. Governments and 
constitutions are the grammar and syntax of such 
expression. Therefore a good Liberal, while admiring 
and glorying in the characteristics of his own race, 
will not let a narrow pride blind him to the merits of 
. kindred types, even of the most alien types ; patriotism 
is none the worse for looking beyond its own waist- 



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Colonies and Ireland, 153 

coat buttons. The doctrine of an apostolic mission 
entrusted to the English race to inculcate its language 
and habits all over the world, to the exclusion of other 
concurrent civilisations, he will reject with disgust 
and contempt. If Liberals do not any longer say, as 
some once did, " The Colonies may go if they like," 
it is not that they would be parties to a second folly 
like the American War, but that they agree in desiring 
to hold them in union by other bonds than shackles. 
If any Colony were likely or able to develop itself 
into a distinct national type, it would be no longer 
our duty to attempt to enforce an alienated connection. 
We find no fault with the Duke of Devonshire's state- 
ment that our naval resources are as much destined 
for the protection of every English settlement in the 
world as for the defence of our own shores. But the 
same principle which makes us welcome and main- 
tain our free expansion as a nation, claiming no 
small fraction of the world as our field, compels us 
equally to recognise every reasonable assertion of 
nationalism within ourselves. No particular essay in 
this book has been devoted to a restatement of Home 
Rule for Ireland as part and parcel of our creed ; 
those articles rather have been treated which for 
the moment are the text of burning questions. To 
say that Home Rule is not one of these is a frank 
statement of tactics and possibilities. While we 
write, the suggestion of a material grievance^ is 
1 "The Financial Relations Commissioners' Report," Jan., 1897. 



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154 Liberalism IN Outward Relations, 

proving so effective a solvent applied to the more 
selfish and hollow portions of the body of Uniomst 
opposition, that any moment may justify the re- 
storation of Home Rule to a practical prominence 
corresponding to the priority in interest, even in 
affection, it occupies in every genuine Liberal. We 
are as determined as ever to allow nationalism, where 
genuine and substantive, to express itself, as oor 
principle demands, in national government. Con- 
siderations of political convenience, sense of the 
inadequacy of the central Parliament to deal with 
the vast body of imperfectly delegated provincial 
affairs it necessarily neglects at present, desire to 
atone by even a tardy generosity for past sins and 
unscrupulousnesses : these all are operative, but the 
cardinal motive which keeps us to Home Rule is 
that unshaken faith in nationalism as the prime 
principle in all greater politics, which the noblest 
Englishmen have expressed for a century, and which 
lessons presented in every continent of the world, 
plain to the dullest eye, from day to day fortify 
and establish. 

This national principle, even apart from any other 
consideration of right or policy, is sufficient to decide 
a Liberal's point of view when he regards one of the 
most momentous events in the foreign affairs of 1896 
T—the violent invasion of the territories of one State by 
a band of independent (let us hope the epithet may 
be most clearly and unmistakably justified) free- 



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Transvaal. 155 

hooters, themselves subjects of the suzerain of the 
State they invaded. Just as we call for the legalising 
of Irish nationality, so we demand respect for 
other nationalities included in our greater unit of 
civilisation, though those be insignificant, unsympa- 
thetic, or even hostile to ourselves. The Boer Re- 
public (for which we have no reason to pretend the 
slightest sympathy or liking) was and is absolutely 
justified in not largessing the privileges of citizenship 
among the motley horde of speculators who gathered 
to exploit its resources. Else, what defence has a 
small State for its nationality, when it is master of 
natural resources calculated to attract an outnum- 
bering multitude of fortune-hunting settlers? The 
dangers of a little State of a few scores of thousands 
hardly come home to a nation of forty millions. 
But that its right was not more readily and uni- 
versally acknowledged in England is only one proof 
among many how suppressed and apathetic the sense 
and very conception of citizenship are become among 
ourselves. 

We say here no word either for or against 
the imaginary project of uniting all South Africa in 
a British Empire or Federation ; that lies not only 
out of range, but beside the mark. We may have to 
fight with the Boers to decide which of two possibly 
incompatible races and nationalities is to prevail ; but 
in that hypothetical contingency let us at least be 
sure that our method is an open hostility and not a 



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156 Liberalism in Outward Relations. 

burglary, rather more romantic for scale and scene, 
but other^vlse not essentially different from the vulgar 
every-day examples of housebreaking. And let us 
hear no more of the disingenuous apology which 
justifies Dr. Jameson's raid by the false analogy of 
the Elizabethan sea-captains who gained a great part 
of the British Empire by methods at least akin to 
privateering. It is high time the glamour was 
stripped from the ugly dealings of militant finance. 
Dr. Jameson's men attacked not the greatest empire 
of the day, but a small isolated republic ; not under 
a state of war, but in perfectly friendly relations. 
Mr. Rhodes talks of our ** unctuous rectitude " ; the 
sneer is justified. But if it is our national calamity 
that all our well-doing should carry the Pharisaical 
grease, still we shall hardly consent to an injustice 
merely to please a rough colonial opinion off which, 
perhaps, something more than the grease has been 
rubbed. " Expansion " is, no doubt, a taking hobby, 
but it is one which, under other names, has carried 
not a few of its riders into Newgate. 

Some way back in this essay the phrase occurs, 
" military instincts may express themselves either in 
chivalry or brutality "; this business of the raid sug- 
gests that a great part of the public opinion in 
England has very imperfectly seized the difference 
between the two qualities. Apparently, a little reck- 
lessness thrown into the inferior scale was quite 
enough to equalise the balance. Touch your burglar 



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National Principle, 157 

with the least air of the highwayman, and he becomes 
the perfect knight. Admiration for such courage as 
was shown (it sinks pretty small after the full deduc- 
tions have been made for a number of other con- 
ditions) was well enough ; but in the vacuum of 
minds unbalanced by principle, such sentiment was 
able to surprise and overthrow the whole judgment. 
We need not here inquire how much the Poet 
Laureate's effusion contributed to quieting this 
enthusiasm. At least, the Liberal party may 
congratulate itself that it did not consider the 
matter from this essentially feminine point of view. 
And the failure of the attempt spared us the 
eventual demonstration how far the raiders were 
justified in the hope that though, if unsuccessful, they 
might be repudiated by their Government, success 
was sure of countenance and adoption. 

But the main point recalls from this digressive 
illustration — this faith in the national principle it is 
our duty to foster and confirm. Great orators and 
great leaders in the past have not found it difficult to 
make an effective appeal to the belief. It has already 
been urged that we must use the national interest as 
a kind of greater personal interest to induce English- 
men to exercise their duties as self-governing citizens ; 
and argued that we shall be no less patriotic for 
recognising elsewhere that same national unit, our 
sense of membership in which is itself patriotism. 
Our past enthusiasm for Italy a nation; our late 



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IS8 LiBERAUSM IN OUTWARD RELATIONS. 

uncongenial respect for the Boers a nation ; our 
party's adoption and maintenance of the cause of 
Ireland a nation : these stand all together, as kindred 
manifestations of a principle which has become a 
deciding element in the formula of modern Liberalism, 
There is a constant difficulty in attempting to 
include in small limits a statement, even rudimentary, 
of the principles inspiring a set of beliefs in any great 
province of opinion. The scale leaves it open to the 
reader to complete amiss what is hinted in outline, 
and to distribute wrongly the emphasis and import- 
ance of a number of considerations expressed with 
insufficient detail to determine their proportions. 
But the notion of this book was not a formal pro- 
gramme composed of articles exhaustively treated ; 
but rather the expression of the guiding beliefs of 
authors, essentially agreed, but freely differing in non- 
essentials, as applied to a selection of representative 
topics ; with the purpose of confessing, no less than 
producing, convictions ; of suggestion rather than 
demDnstration ; of indicating and inspiring, more 
than of elaborate instruction. The difficulties of the 
method can be only partially neutralised by an 
attempt to anticipate the more obvious misunder- 
standings and objections. But one thing has been 
so specially emphasised in this essay in particular as 
perhaps to prove a stumbling-block — a form, if a 
modified form, of militarism. The prominence given 
it is justified equally by the excessive anti-militarism 



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MlUTARISM AND CONSCRIPTION^ 159 

which infected the Liberal party for many years past, 
and by the evident tendency to return to a more 
human view of the question. I am free to confess 
my belief that the moral advantages of conscription * 
(if only as promoting that genuine, friendly, civic 
equality, whose home is the caf^ of a Latin country, 
but which political levelling seems unable to give us 
in England) incomparably outweigh the economic 
objections ; and to suggest that those who declaim 
unconditionally against war are very imperfectly 
conscious of the horrors of peace — another side view 
upon our general materialism. But all this in 
parenthesis ; these opinions appeared too personal, 
not to say eccentric, for me to be justified in in- 
troducing them^ in the body of the argument. What 
has been written above upon the wholesomeness 
and necessity of the military instinct is not to be 
reckoned as a profession of militarism in the offensive 
sense of the word. Military insolence as manifested 
in Germany — the claim of a citizen while on service 
to impose himself on citizens who are not — ^is a 
disgusting and horrible thing ; where it does flourish, 

^ In an article of extraordinary interest and brilliant ability by a 
French publicist, who is as well informed about other peoples as he is 
critical of his own, I find the admirable phrase, '*The army has 
become at once the bulwark of national security and the school of 
patriotic virtue." (M. de Pressens^ in Revue dts Deux MbndeSy Feb. 
15, 1897.) These words are a text I should much have liked to 
enlarge upon, if the whole of this matter of conscription were not so 
subordinate, as well as so personal, as scarcely to justify more than a 
hint at two main heads of argument in its support. 



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i6o Liberalism in Outwaud Relations. 

largely due perhaps to such service not being repre- 
sented as rendered to the country, the body of fellow- 
citizens. Neither does this essay call for war reck- 
lessly and unconditionally ; you may be a believer 
in the duel as a wise and honourable institution, and 
yet not wish everyone to walk armed, and settle all 
disputes by the sword. Arbitration is an admirable 
practical convenience ; universal arbitration is a 
foolish and feminine dream. No sane, civilised man 
would fight for the possession of a piece of property 
in dispute ; but no honourable man takes damages 
in the Divorce Court That we should submit the 
Venezuelan Question to arbitration is a satisfactory 
piece of common-sense ; if statesmen can draw up a 
general treaty providing for arbitration in all disputes 
with the Americans, so much the better. It is well 
that this alternative should be formulated and 
organised. Though they are our cousins (it is no 
mere paradox to put it in that way ; remote kinship 
is quite as effectual for hate as for love : what South 
German hates a Frenchman as profoundly as he 
does his Northern kinsman ?) we need not fight over 
every commercial or material difference. But those 
statesmen cannot deceive themselves so much as to 
suppose that their treaties of arbitration will not 
shrivel to ashes in the heat of indignation which an 
insult or a humiliation to the national honour must 
kindle. The more treaties of arbitration, the better ; 
we welcome the logical assignation of suitable 



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Democratic Continuity. i6i 

remedies to a particular class of difficulties. But 
they do not supersede war ; only reasonably limit 
the sphere of its proper employment. 

It was no part of the scheme of this essay to enter 
into the minutice of detail Detail has been the curse 
of Liberal propagandism in every department during 
these unfortunate last few years. The same mischief 
made itself felt in the particularism which has cracked 
the essential unity of all Liberals into sections, and 
groups, and individual monomaniacs. A little logic, 
and so much might be done. The re-assertion of 
principle is the essence of this book, and it is only to 
presenting principles for the direction of outward 
relations that this essay was addressed. Details, to 
recur to a point treated earlier, are naturally below 
the range of common popular consideration. Their 
importance in foreign affairs has been emphasised to 
excess as a precaution against public scrutiny by 
those whose interest lay in such concealment. And, 
strangely enough, the sacredness of continuity in 
foreign relations was regularly alleged in justification. 
I have attempted to show that continuity, so mis-* 
understood, appeared to external critics as unprin- 
cipled vacillation, as a casual, accidental sequence of 
Opportunism. If we look for the most conspicuous 
continuity and the steadiest consistency in policy, we 
must turn our eyes to the most organised democracy 
in Europe. France is the golden example of estab- 
lished principle regulating policy so that logical 

L 



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1 62 Liberalism in Outward Relations. 

continuity is apparent and cardinally determining 
through all minor variations. The reason is patent. 
Every Frenchman knows the great objects of his 
national ambition. The hopes and aims of France 
are actively present in every individual citizen — ^pre- 
sent, in fact, with the liveliness and force of a personal 
sentiment. Have we anything of the kind in Eng- 
land ? Is there any principle of external relations 
which the average Englishman clings to with passion 
or is indignant to see outraged ? We have the pre- 
dilections of individuals, as we have the half-academic 
preferences of clubs and groups ; but for anything 
larger than that, the splendid genius for politics 
which distinguishes Englishmen in matters domestic 
seems to desert them, leaving an unreasoning lethargy 
rarely awakened. We have forgotten the meaning of 
the word Ministers ; it is as if the butler of a great 
house were allowed to choose and invite the guests, 
plan the amusements, fix the scale of living, and 
generally interpret authorised delegation to ad- 
minister as equivalent to abdication on the master's 
part of his sovereign rights of decision. 

But once more to return. I have not attempted 
to suggest the details of foreign policy, to specify 
relations with particular Powers, or define England's 
attitude in particular questions or particular quarters 
of the world. It remains, however, to reconsider from 
a fresh .point of view a matter already treated under 
another light Nothing has been said of continuity, 



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Party in Foreign Affairs. 163 

regarded from the party point of view. Has a party 
a foreign policy ? Is there a difference, beyond the 
personal, between Lord Salisbury at the Foreign Office 
and Lord Kimberley ? Can a Liberal Foreign Minister 
feel that his work there is as much part of the ex- 
pression of his Liberalism, as, say, a Liberal Home 
Secretary or Vice-President of the Council? The 
question is of extreme delicacy ; the answers exposed 
to every sort of misconstruction. Deny it, and a 
great part of your political friends will cry out against 
you for a traitor ; affirm, and the enemy accuses you 
of preferring party to country. Frankly, however, 
the answer here given will be a qualified but still a 
definite affirmative. Liberals to-day need not scruple 
to admit that their foreign policy has been often 
unfortunate in the past ; perhaps almost always 
through playing with our besetting sin of sectional 
particularism. The noisiest usurp the right of speak- 
ing for all, and the faddist who has not logic enough 
to subordinate expediencies and classify duties is 
invariably the noisiest Yet it is still doubtful if 
Lord Rosebery's wise warnings of this danger, and 
their trenchant justification in event at the black 
election of 1895, have bef^n sufficient to teach the 
party common-sense. But, without prophesying on 
that point, it may be observed that in our foreign 
policy Liberalism has displayed a much more hope- 
ful recovery of nerve than in any other department. 
Nerve and confidence in a cause: those are the 
L 2 



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i64 Liberalism in Outward Relations. 

desiderata to make us once more an organised and 
powerful (not to add a triumphant) party. Chaos 
hardly gives nerve, nor is confidence kindled by 
having an encyclopaedia for a war-cry. Still, there 
are signs of better things. But putting aside the fact 
that our lapses into incapability have perhaps been 
more frequent and grievous than those of our rivals, 
with the reason for such inferiority, and resuming 
the question of difference between parties at the 
Foreign Office, I would repoint it and ask. Is there 
difference of direction as well as of execution i Has 
Liberalism at home natural affinities abroad, natural 
sympathies in certain quarters ? And the answer is 
yes, with a but Put it in this way. Suppose a body 
of English electors adequately informed (by those 
whose duty, after all, it is to be their instructors) of 
the cardinal conditions of European politics — so well 
informed, at least, that France, Italy, and Germany are 
something more to them than so many names dis- 
tinguishing portions of the unknown — and made aware 
that it is the right and the business of every one 
of themselves to form his opinion and express his 
desire in foreign questions; suppose, further, that 
an audience of such citizens who call themselves 
Liberals is asked its preference among these foreign 
nations whose distinctions and characteristics each 
one will ex hypothesi have apprehended— at least, in 
broad lines and rough colours — will not the same 
opinions and beliefs in virtue of which he calls himself 



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wmmm 



Democratic Affinities 165 

a Liberal make him look primarily with sympathy at 
one and antipathy at another Power before he comes 
to correct and modify, as necessary, the partisan 
result of that first view by regard to his own 
country's collective interest? 

Surely a Democrat will discover affinities to a 
nation of Democratic genius ; the Liberals will surely 
turn with enthusiasm to the country whence the 
sparks flew over to us which kindled that slow con- 
flagration of privileges and inequalities that is the 
history of Liberalism in England during this nine- 
teenth century. Mr. Gladstone has stated publicly, 
not once nor twice, his well-known sympathy for 
France, and his belief that England and France, 
two national civilisations more essentially akin, more 
deeply inter-influential in past and present than any 
two others, might together perform a great work for 
universal civilisation. And more than that : we see in 
France actually presented those principles which were 
once the backbone of Liberalism in England — proud, 
individual independence of freemen in the congenial 
sphere of an immensely extended peasant proprietor- 
ship, and an admirably universal sense of permissive 
or directive participation and responsibility in the 
common acts and counsels of the State. The most 
convinced believer in the aptness of the English 
people for monarchical rule, and the most faithful 
maintainer of the aptness of our Royal Family for 
sovereignty in England, will do no violence either to 



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1 66 Liberalism in Outward Relations. 

his principles or to his loyalty by admiring the people 
who show themselves capable of so honourable a form 
of government as a Republic. 

That is only the most elementary indication of a 
thing that might be worked out with a great variety 
of arguments — Liberalism actuating the choice of 
national friendships, or, at least, determining the pre- 
ferences of an unattached Power. But a hint is all 
that is here intended ; other applications can be 
freely supplemented. 

And now for the reservation, the but. This active 
sympathy for other democracies will be still only one 
factor among many. A number of considerations 
ar§ summed up in the golden rule of minding your 
own business as a nation ; though the rule is far from 
absolute that interference between parties in a foreign 
State is in no case of civil war or revolution to be 
permitted. Still, it is nowhere our business to evoke 
a revolution. Individual Liberals may sympathise 
with Nihilism in Russia, but a Liberal Foreign 
Minister is perfectly entitled to improve our relations 
with the Czar's Government even to the pitch of con- 
cluding an alliance. The French democracy does 
nothing inconsistent in cordially attaching itself to 
the Russian despotism, though nine Frenchmen out 
of ten may detest that type of government. It is 
very probable that the alliance has already done a 
great Liberalising work in Russia. A good Christian 
who is intimate with an Agnostic friend is not incon- 



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^i^p^ 



AND Antipathies, 167 

sistent, only wisely Liberal. On the other hand, he 
is thoroughly justified in refusing to dine with a 
neighbour who is a notorious wife-beater and tyrant. 
Bad morals are a public offence, bad opinions at most 
a private difference. Similarly, sacred though we 
hold the principle of nationality, as above recorded in 
these pages, a Liberal may, with a free conscience, 
maintain our existing cordial relations with Austria, 
the fortuitous aggregate of many nations. In fact, 
sympathies of character and opinion may have an 
initiative, positive effect in establishing and keeping a 
particular course in Europe ; but antipathies of 
opinion will only become considerable when rein- 
forcing a sharp antagonism of interests. For example, 
if a certain power consistently opposes and thwarts 
us ; if a certain nation in its essential unoriginality 
has been drilled to conceive a copy of our English 
national ambition, so that this younger understudy 
tries to oust us from our part in the world ; then the 
patriotic grievance of threatened interests and ma- 
licious jealousies will be powerfully reinforced in a 
Liberal's mind by his proper political contempt for a 
people who allow the form of Parliamentary and civil 
liberties which they are incapable of realising to be 
reduced to a humiliating pretence by a morbid egoism 
aping the effete forms of mediaeval sovereignty. Once 
more the strongest bond, knitted of both kinds of tie, 
may be exemplified in our connection with Italy, 
in whatever precise category of relations — alliance, 



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1 68 Liberalism in Outward Relations. 

entente^ etc. — it be officially registered : the broad view 
cares little for these pigeon-holes. It is hardly ne- 
cessary here to speak of a third kind — dynastic 
connections. Their importance has been so greatly 
reduced by popular feeling (indirectly reflected into 
even the most autocratic monarchies), that in the 
instance most conspicuously present, perhaps, to 
everyone's mind, they can merely be described as a 
slight security for good, or a slight restraint upon bad, 
behaviour, for the nation, through its Royalties, to 
hold or to exercise. 

The concluding pages of this essay must sum- 
marise and reiterate, must emphasise anew the 
dominant notes. If it began by a complaint of 
certain mischiefs chargeable not only against the 
party to whom this book appeals, but against the 
national character as a whole which harbours them, 
this was not to imply a delusion that that character 
could be transformed. A fine psychologist has 
spoken of the "shameful pleasure of self-reproach," 
a pleasure from which Englishmen, it must be said, 
more than most indulge in an abstinence. Prophets 
of evil are indeed popular enough ; Jeremiads on 
declining trade are all the rage ; preachers of whole- 
sale wickedness and damnation can always draw a 
full church. But in politics things run otherwise : 
it is by no means a popular cue to reproach the 
English democracy with its dull materialism, when 
a certain class of politicians belaud the same quality 



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SUMAfAR Y — A PA THY. 1 6g 

as sound British common-sense; with a neglect of 
its rights and duties, when flatterers confuse such 
abstention with the wise general delegation essential 
to modern democracies. The whole of the opening 
of this essay was directed against faults which, if 
in their acuter forms they are simply Conservatism, 
prevail almost universally in their less pronounced 
varieties. The Liberal party has to fight against a 
permanent dead weight: a world of pains shoves 
the stone to the summit and poises it for a moment, 
then " the force of nature " carries it away headlong 
into six years of Tory administration. We have 
standing odds against us : certainly there are 
moments when no Liberal regrets the strength of 
the adverse party ; and one satisfaction is constant, 
that whatever you can work or effect upon such a 
stiff material is a strong and abiding impression. 
In Foreign Policy the ignorance and apathy of the 
people are more than elsewhere due to want of 
teachers, shortcomings of the party propaganda. ^ 
And where teachers have not been wanting, much of 
their work has been flimsy and ineffectual, because 
no foundation of knowledge was laid. Nations and 
Powers, provinces and places are unmeaning symbols 
and ciphers unless previously explained. "France," 
"Germany," "Concert of Powers," "Balkan Ques- 
tions" — these are idle shibboleths chucked about as 
freely from tub-thumper to tub-thumper as such 
deplorable phrases as " Social Legislation " and 



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I70 Liber AUSM in Outward Relations. 

" Social Question," which have become the bad coin 
of political humbugs of every kind. To deliver 
politics and the English language of much of this 
poor mechanically current stuff, a little masculine 
precision and definition in thought and expression 
will suffice. If the very word "social" could be 
tabooed, much humbug would be choked. With 
the former kind, it is even easier; a little trouble 
without that mental effort will do it. Go to a village 
audience, and try to give a picture^of a Frenchman 
— how he lives, what he eats and drinks, what he 
thinks about and wishes, how he differs from them- 
selves and how resembles — then, and not before, do 
tirades upon our relations with France begin to 
take an air of living reality. " One half the world 
knows nothing of the life and government of the other ^^ 
is one of those dicta which all the brag of material 
science and improvement leaves very little less 
essentially true than it was four hundred years ago. 
Partly because we prate about the Governments 
without first realising the life which inspires the 
Governments. 

The first object, then, is to produce feeling, and 
make opinion possible. Next will come the question 
of the direction which the motive power thus stored 
will take to express itself. Here it has been con- 
tended that Liberalism must lay hands upon much 
good matter hitherto put to bad uses, applying to 
Jingoism Lord John Russell's excellent saying about 



"^j 



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Bad Extremes, 171 

dirt. We have to capture and organise to sound 
purposes much good sentiment and crude patriotism 
about outward relations, till we can turn out an 
'intelligent citizenship, master in its own house; con- 
scious and proud of its own resources, fitted and 
resolved to exercise its right of determining their 
employment. Little Englanders as a party have 
succumbed to a fate that cannot too speedily overtake 
the barbarous name which was found for them. The 
idol of the group was a distorted exaggeration of the 
pacific principles of Liberalism ; an idol set up by a 
clique and accepted, as so many unessential things 
are fetishised among us, with unquestioning deference, 
till at last a turn of chance knocked the whole thing 
to dust and put an end to its sanctity and its exist- 
ence — an existence which without other attributes 
had caused its sanctity. So blindly do we acquiesce 
in the actual : a busy section imposes its fad without 
hindrance ; iconoclastic chance removes the burden — 
and in a little while we can hardly believe it ever was 
on our shoulders. Neither disease nor cure breaks 
our apathy : one might say of the British public 
that it is a good patient — ^but a master of catching 
illnesses. 

Next, the English people, impressed with the 
qualifications and the will for such autonomy, 
collectively as individually independent, in foreign 
relations as in domestic liberties, will look round and 
freely select its friends and enemies in the world. 



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172 Liberalism in Outward Relations. 

We have refrained, for reasons before given, from filling 
up the principle with specifications : experts must 
follow and complete the reformer, and personal pre- 
ferences must not be allowed to discolour the principle. 
But the suggestion may be repeated that our greatest 
duty is to exercise our adoptive heritage of a part of 
the Latin civilisation, to vindicate our membership in 
the true Western unit. Cosmopolitan Radicalism has 
indeed been exploded, or will finally be exploded 
when the promised return to natural logic has rectified 
the confusion between the reasonable spheres of 
religion and politics — the world and the nation : 
Christianity an essentially cosmopolitan confession, 
Nationalism the foundation of politics. But for an 
extended unit in politics we must look first vaguely 
to Europe, as far as Europe is an individual civilisation, 
and next, far more definitely, to the precise and 
organic unity of the West proper. 

We have admitted, frankly, that England is selfish; 
Liberalism need not hope to do more than interpret 
that selfishness into determination to be true to our 
own selves. We are a commercial people, but not 
unaware that there is more to be done in the world 
than buying and selling ; in past experience we have 
shown ourselves capable of acts of heroic justice 
and movements of generous enthusiasm. The mer- 
chant can lose himself in the man, the trading 
company in the nation. Let us ennoble commerce by 
realising the difference of the merchant-prince and the 



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Conclusion, 173 

petty huckster. We, too, can redeem the adventitious 
vulgarity of commerce by magnificence of scale, and 
hold our heads high in the aristocracy of nations by 
employing our material wealth and industrial re- 
sources not as an end in themselves, but as rich and 
proper means to the attainment of greater triumphs 
in fields of more ideal and lasting achievement, some- 
way the Athens or the Rome, not merely the 
Phoenicia of a new cycle in history. 

J. S. Phillimore. 



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175 



A LIBERAL VIEW OF EDUCATION. 

The Liberal view of the State — ^The activity of the Citizen — The place of 
Education — Hostile influences — ^The forces of political and religious 
monopoly — Historical summary — Oligarchic obstruction before 1870 
— Confusion of thought — Later Reforms — The Modern Problem — 
Attacks upon Education — An ignoble spirit — Contrast with Liberal 
ideals — Concrete expressions of this hostility — (i) Proposals to restrict 
expenditure — (2) Antagonism to School Boards — Motives of this attack 
— (tf) Short-sighted economy — Its fallacies exposed — (b) Sectarian 
bias — The work of the School Boards — The Voluntary Schools — The 
claims of their advocates — Support due to financial rather than re- 
ligious motives — The injustice of private Government — The Liberal 
principle of democratic control — The Voluntary School an isolated 
instance of its violation — Necessity for concentrating on this point — 
The mistake of 1870 — A paralysing compromise — Differential religious 
instruction — Sectarian control, not Sectarian teaching, the real evil — 
Suggested scheme — Other Reforms — The age limit — Evening Schools 
— ^Technical Education — Its relation to Agriculture — Comparison with 
other Countries (Denmark) — Skill, not protection, needed — Technical 
Education and industrial success (Wflrtemberg) — A striking instance 
' — Its relation to Labour — But the primary school the basis — Urgent 
need for increased efficiency — Relation of Education to Liberal Ideals 
— The civic spirit — The hope of democracy. 

THE State is often spoken of in the language of 
metaphor, and sometimes defined in the terms of 
some brilliant paradox. The reason is not difficult to 
find. There is an absence of exactness in human rela- 
tions which gives society a certain indeterminate aspect ; 
and an unanalysed conception of the State lends 
itself as readily as other abstractions to the fancies 
of epigram and the devices of analogy. But I will 



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176 A Liberal View op Education. 



y 



> 



content myself with a simple expression of the view 
which I think is implicitly recognised in Liberal 
policy — that it is the purpose of the State to develop 
the conditions of civic activity, and to promote the 
growth of individual character. 

For in association, however rude its form, those 
qualities which are specifically human are first 
brought into play ; and the direct value of common 
action is never more apparent than when the whole 
of a society combines to mould its future citizens. 

This conception of the State again underlies 
the great Liberal principles of freedom and equality 
of opportunity. The State makes freedom possible 
primarily by removing certain restraints upon 
development, which yield to an ordered form of co- 
operation. Equality of opportunity can only be 
recognised as the basis of equitable relations by 
men who acknowledge a common interest. These 
ideals are incompatible with an oligarchic constitution 
which restricts political rights, and degrades citizen- 
ship by making it depend upon adventitious rather 
than the essential attributes — qualities which dis- 
tinguish, rather than those which unite, the members 
of the State. 

It is the capacity to promote and to extend 
freedom in this positive sense of activity which is 
the measure of a nation's greatness ; it is the ability 
to achieve a continuity of method by the similar 
education of its citizens which is the measure of its 



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The Liberal Ideal, 177 

permanency. If a State fails to stimulate such 
development, it falls short of its object ; if it actively 
frustrates it, it defeats its own end. 

The Liberal doctrine, then, clearly does not 
begin and end with its application to the form of 
Government. There are other conditions which ^ 
make for freedom, and which are indispensable ifl 
opportunity is not to be a monopoly, and activity j 
restricted to the fortunate and the rich; and the I 
first of these conditions lies in the nature of the I 
education. 

That freedom i mplies education is a proposition 
which only requires to be stated to command imme- 
diate assent The uneducated man is at the mercy 
of the forces of nature. He is equally exposed to 
the aggressions of his educated fellow-men. And if 
activity is thwarted by the absence of provision for 
education, equality of opportunity is hopelessly de- 
barred. The disability of poverty is stereotyped and 
intensified if riches alone command the means of 
instruction. A career, whether in politics, in the 
professions, or in trade, is only open to the wealthy. 
It is impossible to find a sharper or a more cruel 
line of cleavage between man and man. 

The history of elementary education in this 
country illustrates the close relationship between 
this question and Liberal ideals, for the a dvance 
of education has strengthened the agitation^ foil 
popular Govern mtiflt. Whilst the^^evelopment of 
IT 



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178 A Liberal View of Education. 

popular institutions has quickened the demand for 
education.* 

Education makes a man conscious of his per- 
sonality, and impatient of an artificial distinction 
founded upon wealth or birth ; while the extension of 
popular authority enables the popular demand for 
education to be realised. These two conditions of 
progress act and play upon each other, as do all the 
streams that unite to form the main current of a 
progressive society. Three great educational mea- 
sures during this century have followed closely on 
the heels of important Reform Bills. The Education 
Department was created in 1839, seven years after 
the first Reform Bill. The Bill of 1867 preceded by 
three years only the introduction of Mr. Forster's 
measure of 1870, and the Free Education Act. of 
1 89 1 followed the extension of the Franchise in 1884. 

The wider distribution of political power further 
enhances in another respect the importance of 
popular education. For, with the growth of demo- 
cratic institutions the number of citizens who exer- 
cise some direct influence on Government, imperial or 
local, must be largely increased, and the absence of 
provision for education means that Government tends 
to become empirical and unscientific 



^ Cobden in 1848 : ** In my opinion every extension of popular 
rights will bring us nearer to a plan of National Education, because it 
will give the poor a stronger motive to educate their children, and at 
the same time a greater power to carry the motive into practice." 



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Oligarchy and Education. 17^ 

A monopoly of education is obviously the surest \/^ 
safeguard of a monopoly of political power. The 
weapon of criticism is blunted and opposition largely 
disarmed. Thus it was the unerring instinct of a 
diabolical sagacity for the interests of a religious 
oligarchy which prompted penal legislation in . Ire- 
land in the last century prohibiting the education of 
Catholics.^ Hostility to educational measures in 
England during a great part of this century has 
been largely inspired by apprehensions for the safety 
of existing oligarchic institutions.^ Sympathy rather 
than ridicule was excited by the rhetorical ardour 
of a speaker during the debate on Mr. Whitbread's 
Bill in the Commons, who warned the House that 
"books had produced the French Revolution."^ Sir 
John Gorst, in his article in the North American 
RevieWy speaks of that "dislike to intellectual 
development which is characteristic of a territorial 
aristocracy." This dictum may be abundantly illus- 
trated from the history of education in England during 

^ It was a condition of education in the Charter Schools, in which 
alone Catholic children might be educated, that they should be edu- 
cated as Protestants. Mr. Lecky (Vol. II., p. 204, "History of 
England in the Eighteenth Century ") thus speaks of the system : '* The 
Charter Schools offered a people thirsting for knowledge a cup which 
they believed to be poison, and sought, under the guise of the most 
seductive of all charities, to rob their children of the birthright of their 
faith." The unsectarian system was not founded till 1834. 

^ Doubtless, the landlords of the early century recollected Plato's 
shrewd observation, that a revolution in politics begins with a revolution 
in education. 

* Mr. Francis Adams, " Elementary School Contest," p. 66. 

M 2 



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i8o A Liberal View of Education, 

the present century. The House of Lords rejected 
Mr. Whitbread's Bill in 1807, thereby postponing for 
sixty-three years the creation of a national system 
under local administration. The same body offered 
a stubborn resistance to the creation of the depart- 
ment in 1839, and succeeded in obtaining the 
withdrawal of the rest of Lord John Russell's 
educational proposals of that year. Conservative 
statesmen in the House of Commons, with a 
few honourable exceptions, have been equally 
hostile. 

The friends of a religious monopoly in education 
can also boast a record of strenuous and uncom- 
promising vigour. There has always been a strong 
party in English politics which has frankly regarded it 
as of greater importance that the schools should be 
controlled by the clergy than that there should be a 
system of primary instruction at all. The Bishops 
have been the chief spokesmen of this view. It was 
a less mischievous condition in their opinion that the 
children should not be educated at all than that they 
should be educated by persons who were independent 
of the clergy. Ignorance was a less dangerous 
enemy of " virtue " than secular knowledge. It was 
idle for an educational reformer to explain that his 
policy was merely intended to give the State some 
authority to insist upon a certain standard of 
efficiency, and was not directed in any hostile spirit 
against the influence of the Church. The Bishops 



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An Unequal Struggle. i8i 

only regarded his proposal as a more insidious attack 
upon religion and morality. 

Lord John Russell's Bill in 1839 was bitterly 
assailed by Bishop Blomfield, who contended that 
the State had delegated to the Church its functions in 
the matter of educating the poor. Mr. Fox's Bill in 
1850, drawn up on the general principles which 
governed Mr. Forster's Bill twenty years later, suc- 
cumbed to the influence of the Church Party in the 
Commons. Mr. Lowe's measure in 1861 for im- 
proving the quality of primary instruction provoked 
the bitter hostility of Churchmen, who resented the 
application of any standard at all to the education 
for which the managers of their schools received a 
Government grant.^ 

These forces of political and religious monopoly! / 
united in the past to frustrate Liberal efforts to 1 ^ 
obtain a national system of education. A further 
difficulty confronted the Education Party in the 
extraordinary confusions of thought which have pre- 
vailed upon this question. To-day it seems incredible 
that the interference of the Government in education 
should have been regarded as an invasion of the 
rights and liberties of the subject. But it is scarcely 
half a century ago that educational proposals were 

1 The same outburst of ill-feeling greeted Lord Sandon's half-hearted 
attempt in 1876 to enforce more stringent terms for the award of a 
Government grant, whilst the storm of indignation excited by Mr. 
Acland's circular is still fresh in the public memory. 



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1 82 A Liberal View of Education, 

attacked upon this very ground. The Manchester 
School of Economics will scarcely be suspected of 
having sought to extend the province of Government 
supervision beyond its legitimate limits. And yet 
Cobden was one of the most prominent of the 
statesmen who recognised that education fell naturally 
into the class of State obligations. The root of this 
difficulty was, of course, a religious one. Anglicans 
claimed that the Church alone should control the 
education of the poor. The State was to do nothing 
but provide the necessary funds. Nonconformists 
thought that if State interference merely meant 
the co-operation of the department with the efforts 
of proselytising Churchmen, it was only a specious 
name for the most invidious form of tyranny. It is 
now acknowledged on all hands that education is a 
duty owed by the State to its children ; that the State 
schoolmaster is no more an anomaly than the State 
policeman.^ But this truth has only struggled slowly 
into public recognition. 

The Act of 1870 represented a great advance. It 
was the first explicit avowal by the Legislature of this 
view of the relation of the State to public instruction. 
Education has since been made " compulsory *' and 
" free " after years of Liberal agitation. Compulsory 
education was recognised by Liberals as necessary in 

i Cf. « MiU on Liberty," Chap. V. :— " Is it not almost a self- 
evident axiom that the State should require and compel the education, 
up to a certain standard, of every human being, who is bom a citizen ? " 



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Latest Reforms. 183 

practice and sound in principle. Education is a 
necessary condition of activity — a condition which 
the State must provide, and- with which the citizen 
must comply. In this sense the citizen must be 
" forced to be free." 

Free education is the logical corollary of compul- 
sory education, but it has an independent justifica- 
tion. It is not, as is sometimes urged, a pauperising 
measure. A pauperising policy is vicious, because it 
tends to stifle individual activity and individual initia- 
tive. Free education is a direct and powerful stimulus 
to these forces. The free school, in whatever grade, 
like the free library in a modern city, or the free 
theatre in ancient Athens, finds its vindication in the 
encouragement it gives to intellectual development. 

Free and compulsory schools have further been 
proved by experience to be indispensable to the pro- 
gress of education. Yearly statistics show clearly 
enough the influence of the Acts of 1880 and 1891. 
The passing of these Acts is amongst the most recent 
incidents in the great educational struggle of the cen- 
tury. The gradual construction of an effective system 
is the triumph of Liberal efforts. Every step taken 
in the direction of raising the standard or improving 
the conditions has been won in the teeth of a Con- 
servative opposition,^ inspired, first of all, by an ill- 
di^uised hostility to popular instruction, and, in the 

^ The Free Education Act of 1891 was passed by a Conservative 
Ministry, but Liberals had agitated for it since 1869. 



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1 84 A Liberal View of Education. 

second place, by a genuine mistrust of any system 
uncontrolled by the Church. Extensions of the 
franchise have strengthened the Liberal demand for a 
national system, whilst its necessity was demonstrated 
by the glaring inadequacy of voluntary institutions. 

The Act of 1870 was a tardy recognition of the 
State's duty. A generation had grown up since 
Carlyle^ had uttered his bitter protest and Dean 
Alford ^ had drawn his lurid contrast between 
England and other countries. 

It was at last acknowledged that the State owed a 
duty to its children, and that it was a mischievous 
condition to leave the mass of the electorate in 
ignorance. 

The modern problem cannot be understood apart 
from its historical context. The forces which com- 
bined to thwart the efforts of educational reformers 
before 1870 still play an active part to-day. The 
battle is no longer for an education department or 
a national system. But the spirit which made those 
struggles severe and delayed their triumph is alive 
and potent. There is still a strong party which 
regards it as of greater importance that the schools 

1 " To impart the gift of thinking to those who cannot think — ^and yet 
would in that case think — this, one would imagine, was the first function 
a Government had to set about discharging. " — Carlyle : Chartism. 

2 Dean Alford in 1839: — "Prussia is before us; Switzerland is 
before us ; France is before us. There is no record of any people on 
earth so highly civilised, so abounding in arts and comforts, and so 
grossly generally ignorant as the English." 



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The Modern Problem, 185 

should be controlled by the Church than that they 
should be efficient. There is still a reluctance to 
concede to popular control any vestige of authority 
possessed by a religious society. Nor must it be for- 
gotten that if popular education had few friends half 
a century ago, it still has many enemies to-day. 

What then should be the application of Liberal 
principles to the modern question? Firstly, we are 
concerned for the efficiency of education. Education 
is so vital a condition of national welfare, so indis- 
pensable to that free development which Liberalism 
seeks to make possible, that its progress cannot be too 
dearly bought. No arbitrary limit can be placed 
upon the sphere of elementary instruction, for to dis- 
tribute a good education as widely as the boundaries 
of the nation is the first duty of the State. 

This principle can be illustrated by a contrast. 
It is urged by some that an education which is not 
restricted to the merest elements of instruction is 
out of place for the child of the working man. 
The State is regarded as a society of men who fall 
by some natural scheme into certain classes ; the 
children of the rich are to enjoy every educational 
facility, to use or abuse at their pleasure ; the children 
of the poor are to receive just enough instruction to 
enable them to attend with some degree of intelli- 
gence to their appropriate avocations, and to prevent 
their committing any flagrant breach of the law. 
Learning is to be a strict monopoly, a luxury of the 



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1 86 A Liberal View of Education. 

rich ; the intellectual outlook of the poor is to be 
determined solely by their occupations. This senti- 
ment is, of course, not usually avowed in such naked 
and unblushing terms, but it is cherished in sullen 
silence or expressed by inarticulate murmurs in many 
quarters.^ It is strongly at variance with the Liberal 
spirit which refuses to believe that a nation is only 
concerned to escape the incubus of an incapable 
proletariate or that education should merely serve a 
negative purpose, as an auxiliary measure of police. 
To depress the standard of elementary instruction is 
to perpetuate existing inequalities; to intensify the 
hateful tendency to class isolation; to banish that 
sympathy, born of mutual knowledge and mutual 
respect, which is the primary condition of true national 
unity. And to prescribe narrow limits to the intellec- 
tual activity of a large proportion of the community 
is to defeat the very purpose of the State. That man 
is a rational as well as a sensuous creature is, after all, 
a truth which is as old as Aristotle, although, appar- 
ently, new to the Prime Minister ; whose suggestion 
that there should be inscribed upon the portals of 
Board Schools as a counsel of perfection to the 
education enthusiast, " The School Board rate should 

^ << At one time it was an almost accepted rule that there should be 
a liberal education for a gentleman and a limited one for a peasant. 
John Knox taught us that there should be one education for a man who 
ought to be able to equip himself for any vocation in life that his 
talents justified him to assume. ** — Lord Playfair : " Subjects of Social 
Welfare,*' p. 335- 



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Attacks on Education. 187 

not exceed threepence," must take rank with his 
immortal declaration that the agricultural labourer 
would prefer parish circuses to parish councils. And 
it will readily be admitted that a policy like this, 
which aims at reducing to a minimum the responsi- 
bilities of the State to provide the conditions of 
intellectual development, is tantamount to a denial 
either that society has a human, or humanity a 
rational aspect — ^two propositions which are bound up 
alike with common-sense and Liberal principles. 
Attacks upon education originating from Hatfield are 
not to be treated as merely illusory dangers. 

The existence of a strong opposition to educa- 
tional progress springing from this spirit is no empty 
nightmare of the Liberal imagination. It is ad- 
mitted by Conservative statesmen. During the 
debates on the Education Bill of last session, Lord 
Cranborne made a bitter attack upon the policy of 
the London School Board, who had dared to place 
pianos in their schools. Lord Salisbury, in the 
autumn of 1895, deprecated the payment of high 
salaries to teachers ; and, indeed, he seems incapable 
of considering any other than the financial aspect of 
the question. It is the refinement of cynicism — to 
limit your view of education to the sacrifices which it 
may demand at the hands of the ratepayers. 

It is a great misfortune that this banausic view 
should be held by men who enjoy a more com- 
manding influence than the country squire. The 



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1 88 A Liberal View of Education, 

complaint comes with an ill grace, as Mr. John 
Morley has remarked, from men on whose education 
no expense has been spared ; and the rich man who has 
enjoyed all the facilities which the country can pro- 
vide, cuts a contemptible figure when he grudges his 
contribution to the cost of supplying elementary 
instruction for the poor, who have no other resources 
to fall back upon. Such an attitude suggests re- 
flections on the sterilising influence of the surround- 
ings of luxury and of privilege on the generous 
instincts of mankind. The proposal to place an 
arbitrary restriction upon national expenditure for 
education was not the least remarkable of the extra- 
ordinary provisions of the Bill of last session. The 
temper in which it was received by the country at 
large is not likely to encourage further proposals in 
this direction, and Sir John Gorst has taken an early 
opportunity of disowning it in his article in the North 
American Review. "To attempt to limit by a hard and 
fast line the cost of elementary education is as absurd 
as to attempt to limit the cost of a gun or a warship.'* 
But its inclusion in the Government Bill was an 
ominous phenomenon, and gave a proof, if proof were 
needed, that a Conservative Ministry is the step- 
mother of education. The spirit of jealous discon- 
tent has long been chafing under the progress of 
education, occasionally to break out into noisy 
expression under the sympathetic influence of a 
Primrose League audience. But it will be an evil 



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The School Boards. 189 

day for the country when it comes to dominate the 
Council Chamber of the nation. 

This antagonism to education has taken a concrete 
form in the attack upon the School Board system. 
Any proposal to place restraint upon the freedom of 
action of the School Boards is objectionable to 
Liberals on two grounds. It is, in the first place, an 
interference with the administration of a local popular 
authority. School Boards are elective bodies re- 
sponsible to the ratepayers, who have the opportunity 
of pronouncing judgment upon their policy every 
three years. The remedy, if the School Board is 
extravagant, lies in the hands of the electors. 

Such a policy is, in the second place, a serious 
menace to the progress of education, for the history 
of the advance which education * has made during 
recent years is the history of the enterprise and the 
activity of the School Boards. The services of these 
bodies to education in large towns are acknowledged 
by Sir John Gorst : — '* Two-fifths of the children of 
school age are to be found in the Metropolis and in 
the large county boroughs having their own School 
Boards. In these the Act of 1870 has worked in the 
most satisfactory manner ; the members have been 
most generally elected from those who are sincerely 
desirous of promoting good education, and who take 
a lively interest in municipal government, and they 
have established thoroughly efficient schools." 

Investigation of the field of work upon which any 



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igo A Liberal View of Education. 

large School Board is engaged brings into prominence 
the importance which such a body attaches to the 
interests which have been entrusted to its charge. 
The Liverpool Board, for example, is not content to 
provide education in elementary subjects during the 
daytime. It has established schools for woodwork, 
metal work, and chemistry, and has instituted evening 
classes for the teachers, which may be attended by 
teachers in voluntary institutions, as well as by those 
in their own. 

The fruits of the School Board system are the 
increase in the number of children who receive in- 
struction, and the improvement in the quality of the 
instruction which they receive. Elementary educa- 
tion is not confined to-day to reading, writing, and 
arithmetic ; but in 1869 rather more than half of the 
schools inspected only offered those subjects for 
examination. To-day the education code embraces 
English, history, geography, and elementary science 
as class subjects; and modern languages, mathe- 
matics, physics, amongst the specific subjects, or 
subjects taken by individual children in the upper 
classes. But these subjects are taught far more 
generally in Board than in Voluntary schools. A 
larger percentage of Board than of Voluntary schools 
earn the highest grant for a class subject,^ whilst 

^ 1894 : 85 per cent, of Board schools earned the highest grant for 
first class subjects, and 87 per cent, for second ; Voluntary schools, 
68 per cent, in both cases. 



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Educational Progress. 191 

19 per cent, of the scholars in Board schools were 
presented for examination in specific subjects in 
1894, and only 6 per cent, of those in Voluntary- 
schools. 

. ^, It is not difficult, in the light of such statistics, to 
understand what is meant by the undue competition 
of the Board schools, or to see in such complaint the 
most striking testimony to the value of the system. 

The Higher Grade schools which have been 
established by some School Boards are absolutely 
indispensable, in the absence of any definite organisa- 
tion of secondary education in the country. These 
schools are threatened by any proposal to hamper 
the School Boards. For, although many Continental 
countries possess an organised and graduated system 
of education, extending from the primary school to 
the university, in England there is no such system. 
Twenty years ago Matthew Arnold drew attention 
to the chaotic condition of higher education in this 
country ; and the Report of the Commission of last 
year has served to bring this matter before public 
notice. The Higher Grade schools in many places 
supply a very serious omission in our system, and 
on this ground alone it is criminal folly to restrict 
the expenditure of the School Boards. 

There is another consideration, suggested by the 
history of the School Board system, which is not 
without its worth. It was urged by Liberal Edu- 
cationists before 1870 that education could never be 



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192 A Liberal View of Education, 

rescued from its unsatisfactory condition until it was 
entrusted to local elective bodies. The history of the 
last twenty-five years shows conclusively the ac- 
curacy of this prediction, and vindicates the cardinal 
Liberal principle of local self-government. The ad- 
mission of the people to a control over this important 
branch of domestic administration has effected a 
revolution in the educational condition of the country. 
Democratic self-government has once again been 
proved to be the secret of national progress. 

Two motives underlie the opposition to public 
expenditure on education. The counsels of short- 
sighted economy appeal to many who have little 
faith in education itself, and who grudge the money 
spent upon it as an unprofitable investment. Such a 
view has no claim to serious consideration. To argue 
with the man who would apply a commercial standard 
to the results of education constrains an apology, as 
implying an admission that you can measure char- 
acter in terms of hard cash, or that you can describe 
the purpose of the State in the language of the Stock 
Exchange. But it is possible to meet the objections 
which proceed from this source, and to present an 
overwhelming case to the man who goes to his 
ledger for his principles. The following passage is 
taken from Sir John Lubbock's book, "The Use of 
Life":— 

"The year 1870, the year of the passing of the 
Education Act, was a most important epoch in the 



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False Economy. 



193 



social history of our country. At that time the 
number of children in our elementary schools was 
i,4CX),ooo. It is now over 5,000,000. And what has 
been the result.? First, let me take the criminal 
statistics. Up to 1877 the numbe r of persons in 
p rison showed a tende nc y to increase. In that year 
> the average jonirnhfir was ?Oj8oo Since that y^ar. it 
has steadily d^rreased. and now is_Qnly_ij.QQa It 
has therefore diminished in round numbers by one- 
third. But we must remember that the population 
has been steadily jncreasing. Since 1870 it has been 
increased by one-third. If our criminals had increased 
in the same proportion, they would have been 28,000 
instead of 13,000, or more than double. In that 
case, then, our expenditure on police and prisons 
would have been at least ;^8,ooo,ooo instead of 
;^4,ooo,ooo. In juvenile crime the decrease is even 
more satisfactory. Turning to poor-rate statistics, 
we find that in 1870 the number of paupers to every 
thousand of the population was over 47. It has been 
as high as 52. Since then it has fallen to 22. The 
proportion, therefore, is less than one-half of what it 
used to be. Our annual expenditure on the poor from 
rates is ;^8,ooo,ooo, and supposing it had remained at 
the former rate, it would have been over ;^i6,ooo,ooo, 
or ;f 8,000,000 more than the present amount If, then, 
-we were now paying at the same rate as twenty 
years ago, the cost of our criminals would have 
been ;f4,ooo,ooo more than it is, and our poor .rate 

N 



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194 -^ Liberal View of Education. 

;f 8,000,000 larger. The nation is, therefore, saving 
;f 12,000,000 annually in return for increased expendi- 
ture on education." 

The return of criminal statistics for the year 1894 
shows that only four per cent, of the prisoners con- 
victed during that year could read and write well.^ 

These figures give a literal accuracy to Victor 
Hugo's assertion that "he who opens a school closes 
\j a prison," and should satisfy even the uneasy ap- 
prehensions of the party of economy in education. 

There is another motive actuating this hostility to 
School Boards. Their expenditure and their efforts 
to raise the standard of education are discounten- 
anced by some who consider that the interests of 
Voluntary schools suffer in consequence. The im- 
provement in the Board school education is watched 
with misgiving, because it necessitates some improve- 
ment in the education of the Voluntary schools. Here 
we have a distinct illustration of the difference be- 
tween the view of education taken by Liberals and 
that taken by the sectarian party. The friends of 
Voluntary schools are willing to sacrifice the highest 
interests of education for the immediate advantage of 
their own schools and their own party. Lord Salis- 
bury's advice to the Church party to "capture the 

^ Mr. Roebuck in 1850 : ** You make laws, you erect prisons, you 
have the gibbet, you circulate throughout the country an army of 
judges and barristers to enforce the law, but your religious bigotry 
precludes the chance or the hope of your being able to teach the people 
so as to prevent the crime which you send round this army to punish." 



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Sectar/an Bias. 195 

School Boards" is a striking illustration of this 
spirit. The progress of education is not regarded as 
an end in itself. Every question which it raises is 
considered and discussed without reference to national 
welfare, but solely from the point of view of the in- 
fluence of Board schools upon the pockets of volun- 
tary subscribers. The sacrifice of the whole to a 
part — the only guiding principle of Conservative 
statesmanship — determines the attitude of the party 
to this as to other issues. The School Boards are to 
be crippled, popular education is to be proscribed, 
the standard of national instruction is to be deter- 
mined solely by considerations of a sectarian interest 
But any proposal to hamper the freedom of School 
Boards or to thwart their educational policy must be 
met with a determined resistance. No effort must be 
spared to safeguard one of the most valuable of our 
democratic institutions. With regard to School Boards 
in villages, it is possible that some change may be 
found necessary in the direction of larger areas. Such 
a reform would not interfere with the principles of local 
self-government, and might perhaps conduce to a more 
generous and a more public-spirited administration. 

I have thought it necessary to define at some 
length the Liberal attitude to these particulars. 

The view that public provision for education is a 
largess from the bounty of the rich for the benefit of 
the poor, rather than the discharge of an elementary 
obligation in the interests of the whole community, 

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196 A Liberal View of Education. 

has, unhappily, certain prominent adherents. Nothing 
could be more fatal than the spirit of many of the 
utterances of public men on education to the sense 
of a civic relationship* transcending distinctions of 
class, which should unite with the ties of a common 
history and a common purpose to bind the members 
of a State into the " Single city." 

There is another question in the modem problem 
which demands the definite and unflinching applica- 
tion of Liberal principles. 

Before considering what should be our policy with 
regard to Voluntary schools, let us examine the claims 
made on their behalf by Conservative politicians. 

It is a common assumption of the Conservative 
politician that the great mass of the people 
deliberately prefer a system of education which 
is directed by religious societies. But can it 
be reasonably contended that the comparatively 
slow extension of the School Board system is 
evidence of the general enthusiasm for definite 
religious instruction with clerical control } 

In the first place, a parish cannot always obtain a 
School Board. The consent of the Department has 
first to be gained, and such consent does not always 
follow an overwhelming vote in favour of the adoption 
of the School Board system. There is little liberty 
of choice with a Conservative Government in office, 

^ Who has not noticed the influence in Scotland of the old custom 
amongst the lairds of sending their children to the village school ? 



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VOLUNTARYIST CLAIMS. I97 

and the present Vice-President of the Council has in 
one conspicuous instance overridden local sentiment. 
The provision which fettered local autonomy in this 
respect was one of the chief blemishes of the Act 
of 1870. 

In the second place, it is not zeal for dogmatic 
teaching which has preserved the Voluntary schools 
from extinction. One thousand of these schools 
contrive to maintain their sectarian existence on an 
income not one penny of which is due to voluntary 
subscriptions. The Government grant in these cases 
sufRces to maintain a school which is content with 
a low standard of efficiency. The present Duke of 
Devonshire said, in 1876, that it was important to 
demand that the assistance from the Imperial grant 
should not exceed the amount of the local subscrip- 
tions, because a rough guarantee was thereby pro- 
vided that a denominational school was not unpopular 
in a particular neighbourhood. It is unnecessary to 
point out that no such guarantee exists in these one 
thousand parishes. But the most conclusive evidence 
of all is the policy adopted by the managers of a 
Voluntary school when they have to meet a defi- 
ciency of accommodation. The appeal for help is 
not justified by enthusiasm for religious teaching, 
but by considerations of finance. The ratepayers are 
warned, in Mr. Balfour's language, that they are 
threatened with a School .Board. A contrast is 
drawn between the burdens of voluntary subscription 



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198 A Liberal View of Education, 

and an involuntary rate. The love of money and 
the lov9 of creed are dressed in the same uniform, 
and their common watchword is the Voluntary school 
Railway companies are in some places large sub- 
scribers to these schools, and one cannot reasonably 
regard them as animated by a strong preference for 
a particular type of dogmatic teaching. To investi- 
gate the origin of voluntary subscriptions is to 
discover the motive of the voluntary subscriber. 
That motive is, in many cases, to be found in his 
pocket rather than in his conscience. 

But even if such considerations be ignored, what 
is the strength of the Conservative contention ? 
There is no better test of enthusiasm than the 
sacrifices which it can command.* Even if the in- 
discriminate volume of voluntary subscriptions, some 
;£'8oo,ooo per annum, be placed wholly to the credit 
of the denominational party, such a sum, in com- 
parison with the enormous resources of wealthy 
Churchmen, is not a very eloquent testimony to the 
popularity of the denominational system. 

But if the profession that these schools are 
maintained in the majority of instances in the 
interest of religion is not honest, it is, further, not 
original. The party which seeks to perpetuate 
clerical control at the expense of education has in- 
herited the spirit and sophistry of its Conservative 

^ It is only fair to point out that the Roman Catholics have never 
abandoned a single school. 



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The Sacrifice Demanded. 199 

forefathers, who while subordinating every considera- 
tion to regard for the influence of the Established 
Church, claimed to be the champions of religion. It 
was in the name of religion that the country was com- 
pelled to leave the education of its children and the 
training of its teachers ^ in the hands of a religious 
society which never affected any zeal for secular 
instruction.^ What sacrifices are to-day demanded of 
us for the same object? Schools which are badly 
built and badly equipped are to be maintained in 
perpetuity; the teachers are to be underpaid' and 
subjected to religious tests ; the children are to be ill- 
taught : the " religion of the parent " — at any rate, in 
some cases — ^to be slighted. The intelligent foreigner, 
whose function it is to take an impartial and a de- 
tached view of our native institutions, would learn 
with surprise that there are only nine Board schools 
in which religious instruction is not given, and that 
the undenominational teaching, which is regeirded 
with such horror by some Churchmen when it is 
given in a Board school, is the religious instruction 

^ Lord John Russell's proposal to establish a State Training College 
in 1839 was defeated by the opposition of the National Society. There 
are to-day 43 Training Colleges, of which 30 are Church of England, 
3 Roman Catholic, 2 Wesleyan, and 8 British and Foreign School 
Society and Undenominational. 

^ Vide Report of Duke of Newcastle's Commission, 1861. 

' It is interesting to compare with the report which shows that the 
managers of the Voluntary schools were mainly, if not only, interested in 
religious education, the recent threat of the Guardian — ^to the effect that 
the Church would employ her schools exclusively for the purposes of re- 
ligious instruction unless her demands for further assistance were satisfied. 



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200 A Liberal View of Education. 

which is given to all day boys in the higher schools 
of the country.* We cannot therefore accept the 
hypothesis that the continued existence of those 
schools is justified by a general and deliberate 
preference for this type of teaching and control, or 
that it is a genuine apprehension that religion will 
be otherwise neglected which prompts the majority of 
subscribers to support them. 

Now turn to the question of their control. 

In eight thousand villages the " National " Schoo l 
is the only school. It is governed by^ajjody of 
men over whom the inhabitants of the village, and 
evenlhe parents of the children, have Jio-control, 
and such autocratic government carries with it 
opportunities of unfair and ungenerous treatment 
of Nonconformists. These schools are too often 
regarded by the clergy as institutions for^making 
Churchmen rather than citizens, and the atmosphere 
is consequently uncongenial to the child of Noncon- 
forxmst parents. The trust deed of many of these 
schools incorporated with the National Society 
obliges the managers to employ only Churchmen on 
the stafif, and undoubtedly such a restriction is a 
substantial hardship, as it means that in a number 
of villages the teaching profession is closed to Non- 
conformists. The position, therefore, of such a 
Voluntary school in a village is flagrantly at 

^ Vide letter written by the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies to the Times 
of December 19th, 1896. 



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Control, 201 

variance with Liberal principles. The school is 
public only in the sense that it receives assistance 
from public sources, and that the children of the 
inhabitants are compelled to attend it. Its manage- 
ment is private, secret, and autocratic, and the tone 
of the school is necessarily influenced by its associa- 
tions. A large number of the inhabitants regard it 
with indifference, if not with open hostility ; the 
people are deprived of the invaluable training of 
local self-government, and there is no room for 
public spirit and public pride. 

Such a situation is pregnant with mischievous 
results. The clerical manager is not always proof 
against the demoralising influence of power as abso- 
lute as it is petty. The Nonconformists harbour an 
inevitable resentment against an institution in which 
they suspect that their religious sympathies will not 
always be respected.^ It often happens that the 
schoolmaster is called upon to undertake duties which 
are foreign to his office, and compelled to adapt his 
political sentiments to those of the rector. Indeed, 
the position of the teacher, who receives an inade- 
quate salary and little consideration, is one of the 
gravest abuses of the Voluntary system. 

^ "We agree with the Rev. W. J. B. Richards, Roman Catholic 
Inspector of Schools, that the Conscience Clause is not much use as a 
protection. We think that it is in the management of the school and 
in the appointment of the teachers that the true securities for fair play 
and freedom from the danger of proselytism are to be found." — Royal 
Commission, 1888 : *' Minority Report," p. 363. 



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202 A Liberal View of Education. 

Energies and abilities which might be devoted to 
the public service are exhausted in a bitter, inter- 
necine feud. There is a genuine sense of injustice, 
which revolts in the villages, as it does elsewhere,, 
from the exclusive enjoyment of public authority 
by a private and irresponsible person. The rector 
ex officio becomes the measure of all things. 

The extension^ of democratic self-government has 
substituted popular for privileged control in almost^ 
every branch, of TocaT administration. The English 
citizen may sometimes grumble at theexterif T)f his 
local burdens, but he has at least the satisfaction of 
knowing that his contributions and his interests are 
in the care of a popular and responsible Board, and 
not, as in Ireland (the country to which one turns for 
illustrations of injustice), administered by private 
bodies over which he has no control, such as 
a Grand Jury nominated by the Sheriff for the 
county. In Great Britain, if we except the licensing 
of the distributors of drink and knowledge, it is 
true of almost every public local interest that 
it is under public local control. Education, which 
yields in importance to no other of these in- 
terests, is in the majority of villages still in the 
hands of private bodies. The_Ypluntary school draws 
its income mainly from public fuii.dsj and its^cRolars 
from the children of a public compelled by law to 
send themjto. that school. So long as its manage- 
ment continues to be private, it occupies a unique 



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Need for Reform. 203 

position amongst local institutions. Jlere V taxation 
wiffiouf ^""repf esSitation/'^^ that major premise of 
political injustice^is still, maintairifng itself 

This 'fortress of the private administration of 
public institutions must be assailed by Liberals with 
a ceaseless, unflagging vigour. Opportunities there 
have been for firm and determined action; but our 
hands have been idle, and almost the first efforts of 
a powerful Tory Government have been directed to 
perpetuating the injustice. A _Liberal Government in 
1870 gave its countenance to this abuse^atud.. the. 
marchof^progress t^^ 

l eft it unremedied . That compromise on a first 
principle is fatal to any political success is clear 
from the paralysis which has numbed our energies ; 
from the hesitating, almost inarticulate, character 
of our declarations ; from the hopeless spectacle 
of a party^ which has not dared to lift a hand to 
redress this wrong, and has vindicated its inaction 
in the name of a truce which rather resembled a 
surrender.* 

To break up this odious monopoly, to release the 
villages from an irritating despotism, to give life and 
scope to public activity — these are worthy objects of 

^ It is scarcely worth while to notice the ridiculous subterfuge that 
the supervision of the Department— extending merely to observance of 
a code — ^amounts to control by the taxpayers. 

' Cf, the monstrous paradox that the State should supplement, 
not supplant, the efforts of Voluntary societies which has confronted 
us since 1870. 



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204 A Liberal View of Education. 

a Liberal effort which should be none the less 
determined because it is tardy. 

When this private control has been abolished, the 
question of religious instruction will be open for dis- 
cussion. There is no necessary antagonism between 
Liberal principles and differential dogmatic teaching, 
under proper conditions and with definite safeguards. 

Definite religious teaching has so long been asso- 
ciated with a hateful and intolerable system that it 
comes into court under a stigma. But I venture to 
think that the most hopeful solution of a controversy 
which has gone near to bringing the very name of 
religion into contempt will be found in some scheme 
admitting of denominational education in all schools, 
and private control in none. 

A scheme could be devised by which, at a stated 
time in each school, teachers selected by the various 
denominations in each locality should give instruc- 
tion to the children of their several denominations in 
religion, and, if necessary, in history. 

If this instruction were not a gratuitous service 
on the part of the teachers, the cost of their re- 
muneration would, of course, fall upon their own 
religious societies. 

None of the objections attaching to the present 
system could be urged against such a scheme. The 
State would not pay for religious instruction, which 
would be given at the expense of the denominations. 
The teachers would not be subject to religious tests, 



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Rbugious Instruction — a Scheme. 205 

for they would only teach — or necessarily teach — 
secular subjects ; whilst the effective public control of 
all schools, unlike the ineffective Conscience Clause, 
would safeguard the system against the abuses of 
sectarian spirit. But the essential preliminary to 
the consideration of any such scheme (a return, by 
the way, to the policy of many good Liberals in 
the past) is the establishment of an effective public 
control over all the schools. 

We might then hope to see, what we have never 
yet seen in England,* a genuine co-operation on all 
sides in the work of education, liberated from the 
distractions of conflicting interests.* We should 
satisfy the sense of justice of a minority which 
cannot accept undenominational religion and be- 
lieves that moral teaching can only be given with 
certain definite metaphysical sanctions. We should 
escape from the shifting quicksands of an illogical 
compromise (to which we have sacrificed the freedom 
of more than half the schools) to the firm rock of 
a reasoned and intelligible system. 

But the Liberal view of education demands more 
than a readjustment of existing irregularities. The 
agitation which has been excited by the Education 
Bill may well be turned to account by directing 

^ Note the striking contrast in this respect between England and 
Scotland, where, of course, there is universal popular control. 

' What can be more revolting than the treachery of men who take 
office on a Board with the deliberate purpose of obstructing its work ? 



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2o6 A Liberal View of Education. 

attention to other details in which there is urgent need 
for a more active and more generous policy. 

There is, first of all, the question of the age limit 
The Education Bill of last session proposed that 
twelve should be substituted for eleven as the age at 
which children may work half-time. An amendment 
of the education law is required on two grounds. In 
the first place, not only does the withdrawal of child- 
ren from school at an early age under any circum- 
stances involve considerable educational waste, but 
steady attendance at school till a later age is, in par- 
ticular, the necessary condition of an effective use of 
the facilities for technical education. The veriest 
rustic recognises the folly of working a horse when it 
is too young. If the question be restricted solely to 
economic considerations, it is an equally short-sighted 
policy to allow children to be taken away from school 
and sent to work at an early age. England suffers, 
and deserves to suffer, in competition with other 
countries for the early age at which her children leave 
school. 

There is another question closely allied with the 
last — ^that of attendance at evening schools. The 
growth of these schools, and the encouragement which 
they have received by a special code from the Educa- 
tion Department, have done a great deal towards 
rescuing education from the charge of ineffectiveness. 
The evening schools conducted by some of the large 
School Boards are among the most valuable of their 



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Evening Schools. 207 

great services to education. Boys and girls who 
would otherwise have lost the benefit of the instruc- 
tion gained in the day school have been enabled to 
add to their store of learning, and to grasp some of 
the principles of the industries in which they are 
engaged. It would increase the value of these schools 
very considerably if attendance were made compul- 
sory up to a certain age. The experiment has been 
tried with marked success by a large firm of alkali 
manufacturers,^ who make it a condition of employ- 
ment in their service that boys up to the age of 
seventeen must attend an evening school. Nor is the 
compulsory clause regarded as a hardship by the 
boys, for they have come to recognise the advantages 
of the system. The effect of making such attendance 
compulsory is to protect a man from the consequences 
of a merely temporary dislike of book-work during 
his boyhood, at an age when he could not be regarded 
as a competent judge of his own interests. 

There is much still to be done within the province 
of elementary education. But technical and -higher 
education are in a far more unsatisfactory condition. 
It is only during recent years that serious attention 
has been given at all widely in this country to these 
important questions. The Science and Art Depart- 
ment was till 1890 the sole public authority which 
was able to give financial assistance to the teaching 
of technical subjects. The County Councils have in 

^ Messrs. Brunner, Mond & Co., Norihwich. 



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2o8 A Liberal View op Education. 

many cases done admirable work during the last six 
years by turning to good account the Local Taxation 
(Customs and Excise) Act of 1890. The Technical 
Instruction Committees, for example, of Cheshire, 
Surrey, and the West Riding of Yorkshire have con- 
structed educational systems which are already pro- 
ducing very striking results. 

The importance of improving our facilities for 
technical instruction, to enable English industries to 
meet foreign competition, is now happily receiving 
wider recognition, and the prejudice against substitut- 
ing the methods of science for the traditions of age is 
succumbing before the logic of hard fact. It is now 
acknowledged that the sting of Continental competi- 
tion lies in the Continental school. This is true in 
particular of one great industry, to which attention 
has been directed for some time. Agricultural de- 
pression is the theme of discussion at every rent 
audit dinner, where the country squire joins with the 
overrented tenant in paying a lugubrious homage to 
the broken idol of Protection. Conservative promises 
to help the agriculturist, as lavish as they were in- 
definite, were scattered throughout the constituencies 
during the late election. The legislation of last 
Session indicates the spirit in which they are to be 
carried into effect Liberals recognise as readily as 
the opposite party the evils of agricultural depression, 
but they do not find in an Agricultural Land Rating 
Act the salvation of agriculture, and they look 



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Agricultural Education. 209 

askance at the Protective policy which Conservatives 
are now trying to galvanise into life. The future of 
agriculture rests largely with the agriculturists them- 
selves. It should be the policy of the friends of 
agriculture to remove the restrictions which hamper 
the enterprise of the farmer, and to help him to 
make the most effective use of his skill and intelli- 
gence, the only weapons on which he can rely in the 
struggle. Such a policy suggests two courses of 
action. An antiquated system of land tenure must 
be amended to give the tenant greater freedom and 
greater security, and agricultural education must be 
more widely distributed. 

It is with the latter policy that I am concerned. 
The Cheshire County Council has lately established 
an agricultural school, and it is to be earnestly hoped 
that this example will be generally followed. The 
value of these institutions is illustrated by the in- 
formation given in the Report of Mr. Plunkett's Recess 
Committee. 

We learn from this Report that there has been a 
regular system of agricultural education in France 
since 1848, and that Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, 
Denmark, Bavaria, and Hungary have, one and all, 
well-organised systems of agricultural schools. The 
influence of such training upon the skill and resource- 
fulness of the agriculturist is well seen in the history 
of Danish farming. The trade in butter, for which 
Denmark is famous, has gfrown up within the last 
O 



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2IO A Liberal View of Education. 

twenty years, and the trade in bacon within the last 
eight years. During the last generation Denmark 
has been successfully converted from a corn-growing 
to a dairying and stock-raising country. 

Technical instruction is likewise provided for in 
these countries on a generous and elaborate system. 
The Report of Mr. Plunkett's Committee gives some 
interesting information with regard to Wiirtemburg.^ 

''Forty years ago, Wurtemburg," in the words 
of the man who had most to do with its subsequent 
uplifting, "was purely agricultural and impoverished 
by over-population." Its condition was then de- 
scribed as " deplorable." To-day it is one of the 
most thriving hives of manufacturing industry on the 
Continent, and the British Minister at Stuttgart is 
able to report as follows : — 

'* England now buys from Wurtemburg blankets, 
carpets, flannels, hosiery, linens, tissues, instruments, 
types, drugs, chemicals, paper, ivory goods, wood- 
carving, toys, furniture, hats, pianos, gunpowder, 
clothes and stays. The manufacture of gunpowder, 
once pre-eminently English, is now a speciality of 
Wurtemburg, and the Rottweil Mills have attained 
such celebrity that they supply powder for artillery 
and blasting to Bavaria, Russia, Holland, England, 
and Servia. A manufacture of small arms has also 
obtained a footing, the Mauser factory being now 
famous all over the world for its repeating rifles." 
1 Pp. 57-58. 



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Technical Instruction Abroad. 211 

To-day, as the Director of the Royal Bank at Stuttgart 
told Mr. Mulhall, " there is not a pauper in the King- 
dom of Wurtemburg." In the midst of the depres- 
sion of trade and industry which affected all Europe 
in 1886, the British Minister had to report to his 
Government that " the prosperity of the nation and 
well-being of the masses have suffered no interruption. 
No real depression exists here." 

The Report proceeds to describe the methods 
adopted by the Central-Stelle or Board of Industries 
for the distribution of trade information, and then 
passes on to an account of the very elaborate system 
of technical instruction which obtains in the country. 
It is mainly to the enterprise and judgment of the 
County Councils that we must look for the extension 
of agricultural and technical teaching in its more 
elementary stages. But the Provincial Colleges render 
admirable service in the provision of special training, 
and they are in urgent need of increased State assist- 
ance. A deputation waited upon the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer in the autumn of 1895 to request that 
the grant of jf 15,000 a year to these colleges should be 
doubled, but that request has, unfortunately, not yet 
been granted. The result of a generous provision for 
this object upon the productive power of the nation 
would be enormous, for it is impossible to ignore the 
influence of technical' education upon trade, or the 
important part which it has played in building up 
industries in other countries. If the industrial 
O 2 



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212 A Liberal View op Education, 

revolution means, as it ought to mean, the substitution 
of scientific principles for empirical methods, technical 
training is becoming more and more necessary. 

The true friend of British commerce is not the 
man who attempts to restrict the national view of 
Empire to the advantages of its markets, but the 
man who seeks to arm British industry with the 
only weapon by which foreign competition can be 
successfully confronted. 

Moreover, such a policy would do much towards 
adding dignity and freedom to the status of the 
employed. Education does not merely increase 
the productivity of labour. It helps to release the 
mind of the skilled labourer from the brute tyranny 
of a machinery to which he ministers, but which he 
otherwise does not understand. It is only by edu- 
cation that men become active^ and sympathetic 
members of an industrial society. Without it, their 
service is too often only a mechanical process in an 
unintelligible system. To educate the wage-earner is 
to make industry more human. But technical educa- 
tion does not merely substitute the freedom of a 
reasoning and self-conscious co-operation for the 
slavery of a service unthinking and untaught ; it also 
furthers another Liberal ideal. It helps to equalise 

* Note the emphasis laid on education by the Society for Promoting 
Co-operative Production. Education is a necessary condition of the 
achievement of the splendid ideal of this society. The efficiency of the 
school has contributed, with other obvious causes, to the growth of the 
movement in France. 



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Secondary Education. 213 

the status of employer and employed. It is an 
important factor in securing a genuine, and not a 
fictitious, freedom of contract by an equitable dis- 
tribution of those advantages which wealth otherwise 
secures to one only of the parties to the negotiation. 
The mutual respect of employers and employed is 
indispensable to satisfactory industrial relations,^ and 
it can only be secured by a wider distribution of 
education throughout the industrial community. 

Secondary education is in a still more inchoate 
condition. The supply of such schools is hopelessly 
inadequate.^ The important part which they play in 
the making of citizens is obvious enough, and must 
not be overlooked from a tendency to regard edu- 
cation solely as an immediate preparation for a 
career in a particular industry. It is interesting also 



^ Technical instruction in Switzerland : — " Here, as in Belgium and 
elsewhere, the authorities consider that it is little use to teach children 
reading, writing, and arithmetic, unless you undertake to carry on their 
education in the practical duties of life, and make them good members 
of society. So thoroughly is this principle adhered to, that the ordinary 
artisan is often on the same intellectual level as his employer, and it 
has been observed by an English writer that ' Where master and opera- 
tive are both educated men, as in Switzerland, they seem to get on 
better, because, in a manner, on a footing of equality.* " — Report of 
Mr. Plunkett*s Recess Committee. 

• ** It must be observed, however, that endowed schools, whether good 
or bad, afford very inadequate provision for the secondary education of 
the whole country. The total number of scholars in the endowed 
schools in the selected counties, even when we include non-local 
schools, such as Rugby and Charterhouse, amounts only to 21,878, or 
2 '5 per thousand of the population." — Report of Secondary Education 
Commission, p. 48. 



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214 A Liberal View of Education. 

to observe that the skill and capacity of the Danish 
farmer is in part attributed in Mr. Plunkett's Report 
to the training in history, literature, and language 
in the rural High Schools, the other factor being the 
distribution of land amongst small freeholders. 

Organisation, such as the creation of one central 
and many local authorities, suggested by the Se- 
condary Education Commission, is urgently required 
to bring existing agencies into some systematic rela- 
tion, to make the best use of existing endowments 
and, by means of scholarships, to place good schools 
within reach of every boy of ability. But to combine 
with any proposals a stipulation that no rate shall be 
levied beyond the limit provided by the Technical 
Instruction Act, as was done in the Education Bill 
of last Session, is enormously to discount at the 
outset the value of such organisation. To bring 
technical and higher instruction within the reach of 
every boy and girl who is competent to take ad- 
vantage of it, is an object which justifies a generous 
expenditure of public money. 

But the foundation stone upon which this super- 
structure of educational machinery is to be built is 
the Primary School. Any weakness in Elementary 
Education vitiates the whole system, and renders 
nugatory the whole policy. Sir John Gorst* has 
pointed out that the efforts of some of the County 
Council Technical Instruction Committees have been 
^ North American Review, October, 1896, p. 435, 



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An Educated Plebiscite, 215 

frustrated, because ignorance of elementary subjects 
incapacitated the children of the peasantry from 
taking advantage of technical classes. Higher educa- 
tion implies a certain standard of knowledge, and it 
is idle to attempt to teach, for instance, the principles 
of agriculture to a boy who has not grasped the 
elements of arithmetic. 

If primary instruction does not develop the 
reasoning faculty, education will go no further. Thus 
the argument comes back in a circle to the Elemen- 
tary School. Hie fans et origo malt, 

I have claimed for education that it is an indis- v/ 
pensable condition of freedom. For this reason 
those who are the friends of a monopoly of activity, 
whether in politics or in any other sphere of human 
effort, discourage its progress, and gladly avail 
themselves of the pretext of economy to restrict 
its distribution. It is in virtue of this quality 
that the cause of education is sacred to Liberals. 

They recognise in it their chief ally in their j/ 
endeavour to make Government more democratic, 
citizenship more real, and national life more self- 
conscious. They do not fear to submit the issues 
of an hereditary chamber and- decentralised adminis- 
tration to an educated tribunal, and they have no 
reason to shrink from an educated judgment upon 
the questions of local taxation and land law re- 
form. They have no motive for keeping the electors 
stupid. / 



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2i6 A Liberal View op Education. 

It is a political axiom of Liberal philosophy that 
the goody or the activity, or the character, which the 
State should promote is the good of the whole people, 
and not that of a particular class. The ideals of 
Liberal policy, inspired by this principle, are con- 
cerned alike with the abstract form and the practical 
results of Government. It is only under democratic 
conditions that the political institutions of a country 
will at once express and foster the character and the 
activity of the whole people. This doctrine of faith 
compels the demand for self-government for Ireland 
and the denial of the arrogant claim of an hereditary 
chamber to legislative authority.' Liberal principles 
find expression again in the attempt to reform systems 
of land tenure and land taxation which operate to 
the advantage of a class and to the prejudice of the 
community at large, and also in the endeavour to 
minimise the disabilities and the limitations of poverty 
by adjusting the incidence of public burdens and 
regulating the conditions of employment. 

But the demand that our schools shall be efficient, 
and that they shall be the public instruments of a 
popular authority, rather than the private weapons of 
a sectarian party, finds its place in a policy which 
seeks to give scope and effect to the free play of 
personal character and individual choice. It is 
because education is so momentous in its results on 
character that we dare not trust its direction to any 
but a public and popular authority, least of all to 



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The School and Democracy. 217 

men who can forget the claims of citizenship, even if 

it be in obedience to the dictates of a Church. No 

influence has the power of education to foster or to 

starve the civic spirit, to nurture or to poison the 

enthusiasms of a democracy. For it is in the school 

that you begin to mould the character and the 

opinions of your citizens who will one day make 

their choice between true principles of Empire and 

Government and the false ideals of men who wish 

the State to suppress rather than to express the 

character of its citizens, or who honour empire not 

as the sacred trust to preserve, but as a brute force 

to destroy the liberties of nations. If the surface be 

ill-prepared, you may stamp upon it impressions of 

civic freedom and civic duty, and they will not survive 

to-morrow ; order well your groundwork, and you 

need not fear that even the potent lye of material 

interest will wash out the fast-dyed print of reverence 

for free and equal law. 

J. Lawrence Hammond. 



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219 



HISTORIC BASIS OF LIBERALISM. 

Parliament established by Revolution of 1688 — Extinction of Yeomen — 
Deadness of National Life— Peasantry deliberately pauperised— 
French Revolution assists Reforming Impulse for the Moment — 
Soon stifled by Dominant Class— Which resists all Reform, even 
after 1815— Liberal Party gathers Strength— First Reform Bill at last 
carried — The Poor Law — Free Trade Movement— 1848, and Ireland 
— Progress slackens, 1850-1865 — Lord Palmerston, at Home — and • 
Abroad — Followed by Mr. Gladstone — Disraeli and his Ministry — 
The Berlin Treaty— Evil Effects of, till Present Day— Mr. Gladstone's 
Second Cabinet — Third Reform Bill — Mr. Gladstone accepts Home 
Rule — The Split: its Meaning — Home Rule rejected — Appearance 
of Labour Question — Strikes and Riots-^^he Education Election of 
1892 — Home Rule again — Rejected 'by the Lords — Retirement 
of Mr. Gladstone— 189s, the Great Defeat— Dalliance with Collec- 
tivism — Back to the Earlier Ideal — The Promises of Socialism — Its 
Materialist Aims — "The City of Pigs" — Liberalism v. False 
Ideals — A Leader? — The Battle before us. 

IN the Revolution of 1688 the English people 
changed masters. For the authority of the king 
there was substituted the authority of the Houses 
of Parliament Thoughout the eighteenth century 
the power of this body existed unquestioned as the 
self-sufficing means of government. It did every- 
thing : it displaced ministers, made laws and dictated 
the national policy in war and peace, and it did 
all this without assistance from the nation at large. 
Parliament stood by itself, independent and isolated. 
In describing the Revolutions of 1688 and 
17 14 we are wont to say that they established 



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220 The Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

Parliamentary government ; the word " established " 
is well chosen. The Constitution was an end in itself, 
and it never crossed the minds of the statesmen of 
the early Georges that something more was needed 
to complete the national greatness than an elaborate 
system of " checks and balances " whereby the Crown 
could live in harmony with the Parliamentary 
Estates. In none of the great documents of the time 
will you find the suggestion that the people should 
share in the work of government The makers of 
the Revolution were content with the Constitution as 
it then existed. They never dreamed of providing 
any means for the removal of those defects, which 
would inevitably appear. 

It is to the composition of the House of Commons 
itself that we must look if we would understand how 
far was the people from a share in government. 
Broadly speaking, the Commons were all members 
of the aristocratic class, separated from the actual 
peerage by but a narrow barrier.* They were squires 
and great landowners — often cadets of a great Whig 
house; the merchant element was only scantily 

^ I need haxdly remind readers that the House of Commons differs 
rom Assemblies of the Third Estate in other countries, in that, from 
the very first, it contained members of the noblesse* Abroad, the 
noble, however poor, was sharply divided from the burgher and the 
peasant. The "Knights of the Shire," who had won many con- 
stitutional victories in the Middle Ages, retained their power too long, 
and became, in the eighteenth century, a close, selfish oligarchy. On 
this point, see any constitutional history — best of all, Boutmy, 
Developpemeni de la Constitution Anglaise^ translated. 



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An Aristocratic Parliament. 221 

represented. And the landowners had just passed a 
statute tending directly to preserve their political 
powers and privileges by imposing a property quali- 
fication of ;f 300 a year for the borough and ;£*6oo a 
year for the county members of Parliament. To get 
the modern value of these sums we must multiply by 
more than two. As this qualification was to be 
derived from real property, town and county alike 
were represented by members of the territorial class. 
Only from their ranks could members of Parliament 
be chosen. 

Over these members the constituencies had little 
or no control. The qualification for the county 
franchise was fixed by an Act of 1430 at a freehold 
of 40s. per annum. Though this entirely cut out 
the copyholders, leaseholders, and tenants at will 
— an increasing class — it did not set up a very 
high test, especially when we consider the great fall 
in the value of money that had taken place during 
the past three centuries. The freeholders were 
the strength of the country during the seventeenth 
century, and remained fairly numerous down to 1760. 
But after that date their numbers — already on the 
decline — go down with alarming and extraordinary 
rapidity. By the end of the Napoleonic wars the 
class has ceased to exist Nor can we attribute the 
change solely to the pressure of economic conditions. 
Improved methods of agriculture had doubtless much 
to do with their disappearance; they could not 



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222 Thr Historic Basis of Librrausm. 

compete with the great capitalist landowner. The 
growth of the towns struck at their cottage industries, 
and also provided them with a refuge whither they might 
retreat when driven off the land. But after allowing 
for all these considerations, it is impossible to acquit 
the squirearchy of a deliberate and conscious attempt 
to get rid of the yeomen and force them to sell their 
lands. In a thousand ways, by curtailing their rights 
of sport, by legal chicanery, by constant pressure, and 
sometimes by open theft, the position of the yeoman 
was made unbearable. He sold his acres, and the 
country knew him no more. There were left in the 
villages few but the labourers and tenants at wilL 
How the squires and justices of the peace dealt with 
them will be shown later. 

But if the independence of rural England was 
thus gone, what was the condition of the towns, where 
the territorial class had no footing? The spirit of 
civic life was utterly dead. The corporations had 
long been close oligarchies, jealous of all outside their 
pale. The municipal franchise belonged to a minute 
section of the inhabitants, wherever the corporations 
were not filled up by co-optation. In the hands of 
the corporation lay the whole government of the 
town, and in many cases the election of the mem- 
bers of Parliament. A large town electorate was 
utterly unknown in any borough in England. But 
a seat in Parliament was eagerly coveted. It was 
this small body, of perhaps twenty or thirty men 



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Boroughs in the Market. 223 

at the outside, who controlled the representation. 
Besieged on every side by wealthy landowners with 
political ambitions, who can wonder that they gave 
way to temptation, and allowed themselves to be 
bought and sold as readily and as many times over 
as Government stock on a rising market ? Few insti- 
tutions were ever less representative or more corrupt 
than the English boroughs of the eighteenth century 
— ^save, perhaps, the dominant class, the cause of their 
corruption. As for the growing towns of the Mid- 
lands and north-west, they were generally without 
representation at all ; but this anomaly only became 
glaringly apparent towards the end of the century. 
The rotten boroughs with which England abounded 
were a feature of the Constitution too famous to 
require denunciation here ; but since they have been 
sometimes praised as providing " a covered way " for 
introducing young men of more ability than wealth 
into public life, it may suffice to point out that they 
brought in ten men like George Selwyn or Bubb 
Doddington for one like William Pitt 

With such a system, one is not surprised to 
learn that in 1780 some six thousand men returned 
an absolute majority of the House of Commons. 

The institutions which should have given light 
and teaching to the people — the Church and the 
Universities — were slothful and stagnant. Careless 
of its higher duties, the Church was oppressive to 
those without its pale ; the Test and Corporation 



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224 The HtsTORic Basis op Liberausu. 

Acts were still in force as mementoes of persecution 
yet recent Their provisions^ it is true, were evaded, 
but they remained on the Statute Book, to remind 
all Dissenters that their very existence was on 
sufferance. Cabinets had long been accustomed to 
use the Church as a convenient field of patronage. 
Bishoprics and Deaneries were filled up on party 
lines, to serve party ends. The rector was a hard- 
riding country gentleman, neither worse nor better 
than the other Squire Westerns around him. The 
Universities were closed to all but Churchmen, and 
as places of learning were negligible quantities. 

Nor were symptoms of deadness wanting in the 
religious bodies outside the Established Church. 
The religious fervour of Puritanism, with its great 
faults and its splendid triumphs, was extinct Only 
through Wesley and Whitfield was a certain amount 
of spiritual life at last infused into the mass of the 
nation. 

England, therefore, was wanting in the very rudi- 
ments of political freedom. The people were brutalised 
by the materialist rule of classes who lived on their 
political privileges : they were soon to be pauperised 
also. 

It is not my intention to go through the events 
that lie between 1760 and the first Reform Bill in any 
detail. But there is one great page in English social 
history, to pass over which would be to misunderstand 
the whole of the Liberal movement. I mean, the 



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" The Speenhamland Act'' 225 

'* Speenhamland Act" of 1795, and its consequences. 
What that "Act" was is well known. The justices of 
the peace of Berkshire met and passed resolutions 
on the state of the peasantry. The wages of the 
labourer were insufficient to support life if corn 
continued dear. Whenever, therefore, the gallon 
loaf rose to is., the labourer was to have 3s. a week 
allowed him. This allowance was to be made up 
out of the rates ! As the labourer rarely makes a 
childlesst marriage, something must be done for the 
beings he brings into the world. Therefore a further 
provision of is. 6d. a week must be made for every 
child born to the labourer. This precedent was 
adopted all over England — ^supplementary grants 
out of the rates. What resulted might have been 
predicted in every detail. All motive for thrift was 
taken away ; the labourer did as little work as might 
be, knowing that the rates would prevent him from 
starving. He married and begot recklessly — the 
rates came to his aid again. By 18 19 one-fifth of 
the population of England were paupers. This was 
the system in action. But the causes which lay 
behind were no more purely economic than they 
had been in the case of the yeomen. As before, 
we can trace the conscious policy of the landed 
classes. They had eliminated from rural England 
all save the wage-earners. Acts of Settlement had 
put the wage-earners under the authority of the 
territorial caste. To maintain this authority a little 
P 



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226 Thb Historic Basis op Liberalism. 

longer, and to drive the labourer into veritable 
serfdom, it was necessary that the landlord should 
procure for him a bare subsistence. Only by pre- 

! venting wholesale starvation could they save them- 
selves, their power, and their privileges. The 
hopeless condition of rural England after the Great 

^ War is one count in the long indictment which 

; can be framed against the landed gentry as a 

I ruling class. 

To sum up : the latter half of the eighteenth cen- 
tury shows us a close oligarchy tending to become 
ever closer ; towns without freedom or healthy life ; 
a peasantry pauperised, debased, and almost without 
hope. To right these wrongs was an imperative neces- 
sity, and as a result the Liberal movement early 
acquired, and has never quite lost, the character of an 
attack on privilege, on oligarchy, on caste — on every- 
thing, in short, which derogates from the dignity and 
freedom of the individual man. The attack must be 
based on principles ; freedom and equality must be 
put first and foremost as the basis of the nation's 

. yery existence. 

To this England there comes the first news of the 
French Revolution. Political rights, long dormant, 
are reasserted in France in a highly abstract form. 
Social injustice of long duration is swept away in a 
highly practical, concrete form. All Europe stands 
round expectant and interested. In England the 
Revolution is hailed with joy. Ever since the days 



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The Ideas of *8g, 227 

of Wilkes there had been a small, able, and deter- 
mined section of men clamouring for wide reforms in 
the State. In Fox the country possessed an orator 
of immense power, ardently attached to progress and 
to Liberal — nay. Radical — ideas. Pitt,* the Premier, 
a disciple of Adam Smith, was a believer in Parlia- 
mentary and economic reform ; and though he had 
several times failed to convert Parliament to his 
views, he had yet good hope of ultimate success. 
There was a stirring in the minds of men and an im- 
pulse towards a larger and truer national life. The 
General Election of 1784 had got rid of the worst 
political corruption — as, who should say, an earnest of 
better things ere long. 

The events in France urged men on. Fox de- 
clared the Revolution the greatest and best thing the 
world had yet seen. Everywhere advanced thinkers 
formed themselves into societies for the furtherance 
of Reform. They held meetings and published mani- 
festoes, and kept up communication with some at 
least of the Revolutionary leaders across the Channel. 
But amidst all this ardent hope and passionate ex- 
pectation appeared one hostile sign — the writings of 
Burke. Burke is one of those extraordinary contra* 
dictions which could only have been produced in 
England. He was an almost fanatical believer in 
justice and good government, and his sympathies 
went beyond his own country; they embraced 
^ Pitt called himself a Whig to the end of his life. 
P 2 



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228 The Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

humanity at large. But he was passionately attached 
to the order of things as then existing. He fondled 
error and fostered paradox until he came to be the 
defender of rotten boroughs and close corporations. 
His "Reflections on the French Revolution" had 
probably a greater influence on English history than 
any other pamphlet or piece of writing. They marked 
a turn in the tide ; then came the September Massacres 
and the execution of the king. A cry of horror arose 
in England, and Burke's voice rose higher. " This," 
men cried, " is the end of Reform ! Are we^ too, to 
drift to the same end — the same excesses?" The 
propertied classes, the Church, everyone who had 
anything to lose, declaimed against the Revolution, 
and the cause of Reform was postponed for forty years. 
Henceforward anyone who dared breathe a word 
of change was held for a Jacobin. Indeed, there arose 
in England a White Terror. The Habeas Corpus 
Act was suspended, numerous statutes were passed 
against any who should make a society or publish a 
book for any purpose which the judges might twist 
into sedition. Thus we have that celebrated series of 
trials in Scotland which form Lord Braxfield's best 
claim to the affection of his countr3rmen.* But though 
no man dared open his lips, the discontent and misery- 
were there. Riots, arson, rick-burnings, were numerous, 

^ R L. Stevenson has pictured Braxfield to us in his " Weir of 
Henniston.'* Chap. iii. of that book gives a specimen of hLs demeanour 
on the bench. 



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^^^ 



The Tory Rule. 229 

even with the Frenchmen at our very doors ; and it 
was probably the knowledge of the profound disaffec- 
tion of many among the working classes which in- 
duced Napoleon to think of invading England. The 
Great War came to an end in 1815. Those who 
before spoke no word for fear of seeming Unpatriotic 
or disloyal were now at liberty to take up once more 
the question of Reform. The Tory party, however, all- 
powerful during the war, had no intention of yielding 
their position simply because Napoleon and the 
Revolution had disappeared. They would rule Eng- 
land in the future as in the past, for their own benefit. 
The power of privilege and territorialism was to be 
no whit weakened. Englishmen of this age would 
find it hard to realise how utterly degraded were the 
ideals of their countrymen during the years which 
followed 18 1 5. The territorial class had acquired a 
military flavour, and the insolent, debauched officer 
who had "vanquished the French," became the 
darling of English society.^ He had a profound con- 
tempt for the civilian, and an arrogance towards the 
plebeian which has rarely been paralleled. This 
caricature of an aristocracy possessed a worthy head 
— the Regent, afterwards George IV., who very nearly 
succeeded in making the working people hate the 
name and idea of monarch altogether, 

^ Thackeray, upon whom the times of George IV. had exercised a 
deep influence, has supplied us with many admirable instances of this 
class — ^more especially in the ** Book of Snobs." Possibly, Englishmen 
who have lived in the Berlin of to-day could supply a parallel. 



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■W9^ 



230 The Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

The want and misery of the people increased 
steadily. The Government was perfectly sure of it- 
self, and passed the Six Acts of 18 19, with a view to 
stifling all public opinion whatsoever. Only by leave 
of a magistrate could public meetings be held at 
all, and newspapers were subjected to a merciless 
censorship. The most peaceful gathering was liable 
to a dispersal by the military, followed by indict- 
ments for treason. Thus we have the Peterloo 
massacre and the trials in Scotland of Hardie and 
Baird. 

The years 18 19-1824 are among the darkest in 
our history. To a proper comprehension of the 
period which follows, some insight is necessary into 
the character of the men who made the Reform Bill 
of 1832. It is natural, almost inevitable, that when 
new conditions arise the men who fought the battle 
of freedom in the past should be sneered at as 
" Whiggish " and out of date. So they 4re in this year 
of grace 1897. But that does not alter the fact that 
the work they did was herculean — comparable in 
greatness to that of the Long Parliament in the 
summer of 1641. Other needs have arisen ; we have 
other problems to face. Their battle-cries are anti- 
quated. But we may be able to show subsequently 
that there were principles underlying their work that 
are applicable not to one time, to one crisis, only. 

There were the men inside Parliament, and it was 
with them that the details of the fighting lay. Lord 



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\ 



The Men of i8j2. 231 

Grey, Lord Althorp, Lord John Russell, Palmerston, 
Thomas Babington Macaulay — ^these are names well 
known to everyone still. They were men of very 
diverse power, and of various sympathies. Lord 
Althorp was an aristocrat of intelligence and integ- 
rity, but an aristocrat still. Lord Grey had intense 
convictions and an unshaken belief in the people, 
but neither he nor Macaulay looked beyond the 
middle class. 

Far more remarkable were the men outside Par-^ 
Hament, who were the inspirers and prophets of the 
movement. Cql^fitLhad a rude, pungent mother- 
wit, and the boundless common-sense which is almost 
originality. T4i<^ jc fli^ g^ nJus of the peopl e, that 
detests shams and sees life from the under-side, with- 
out the gilding. Bentham was the man who had 
lived in the existing order, had been nourished and 
trained therein, and who had gradually rise n to a 
feeling of its innate rottenness. His was one of the 
clearest intellects that the eighteenth century, so '■ 
fruitful in that type of mind, produced. He holds 
fast to abstract principles to guide him through the • 
mass of sophistries that surround him. Sciolists and | 
petits-maitres pick holes in his doctrines at their | 
pleasure,^ but thej^road rule that gove rnment ni ust ; 
be by the people ^^,^Zt^ -Il'^'^pl^ ^^^ nfiV^r been , 
shaken. James Mill has been almost merged and 
lost in the fame of his greater son, but, as editor of / 
' Cp. Raleigh, " Elementary Politics," chap. viii. 



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/ 



232 The Historic Basis of Liberalism, 

the Examiner, and afterwards of the Westminster 

Review, he was a powerful assistance to the doctrines 

of 1830. He was in close union and sympathy with 

Ricardo and McCuUoch, as well as with Bentham. 

His mind, if somewhat arid and unimaginative, was 

strong and precise. 

\K These, then, were the foremost writers and 

\ ^thinkers of the time, and they unhesitatingly put 

themselves at the disposal of the popular hopes. 

They did not, like many in later times, lend their 

intellect and power of expression to the existing 

.order, and seek by clever sophistries to bolster up 

ijprivilege and outworn authority. 

And now, in 1827, the great wave of reform began 
to sweep over the country. The Liberals started by 
^attacking the more glaring and indefensible abuses 
which loaded the Statute Book: the Test and Cor- 
poration Acts, which had ceased to persecute but not 
to annoy, were at last swept away. Nonconformists 
could at length enter upon the heritage of which 
they had been deprived for a century and a half. In 
1829 the Roman Catholic disabilities were removed; 
though, with that insanity which marks most English 
dealings with Ireland, the benefit was somewhat 
neutralised by raising the franchise qualification in 
the sister island. At length, in 1830, Parliamentary 
Reform becomes the one and only question of the 
day. 

Into the long story of that struggle I need not 



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The REFORAf Bill, 233 

enter in detail. It will suffice to point out that the 
Reform Bill was met by the most determined and \^ 
embittered opposition from the vast majority of the 
landowners. The Duke of Wellington roundly de- 
clared (shortly after the accession of William IV.) 
that Parliament possessed, and deserved to possess, 
the fullest confidence of the country. The Universities 
were shrill in their condemnation of this wicked and 
revolutionary measure. The aristocracy was aghast, 
the king openly hostile. Living at a time when the 
force of aristocratic displeasure has been largely 
minimised, we can hardly understand the courage 
required from any member of the upper classes 
who sought to forward the Reform Bill. Scarcely 
less remarkable than the vigour of the opposition was 
the extraordinary forbearance displayed by the nation 
as a whole. I am not ignorant that there were riots 
in many parts of England, that Nottingham Castle 
was burned over the head of the owner who would " do 
what he liked with his own," that Bristol was for several 
days in a state of anarchy. But when we consider I 
the extraordinary provocation which the nation had 
suffered, the long oppression, insolence, and injustice 
it had undergone from the ruling class, the land- 
owners — when we remember Peterloo and the Six 
Acts — we shall applaud the moderation of our 
countrymen. Let us bear in mind the behaviour of 
the men of Birmingham, led by Thomas Attwood, 
a worthy forerunner of John Bright. He and his 



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234 The Historic Basis op Liberalism. 

colleagues were at the head of an oi^anisation to be 
numbered by the ten thousand. All were of one 
mind, all passionately eager for reform. They had 
announced their intention of marching to London 
en masse if the Lords did not bow to their just 
demands. But not a weapon was raised ; and if the 
march had taken place, it would have been that of a 
law-abiding, peaceful army, bent on gaining the 
liberty that was theirs, but not by the red hand of 
revolution. 

, The first Reform Bill did not give power to the 
people as a whole. It benefited the middle class 

i only ; it added but half a million names to the elec- 
torate. As a document, it bears traces of com- 
promise, even of partiality ; but to the spirit in 
which it was conceived full justice must be done* 
The opposition was envenomed and unscrupulous, 
and it was only by doing less than they wished that 
the Reformers could accomplish anything at all. 
Earl Grey and his followers said plainly that the Bill 
was but a portion of the wider justice that should be 
in the future. Even the *' Finality " speech of Lord 
John Russell does not really imply that he regarded 
the Reform Bill as perfection. Moreover, as we have 
said, there were behind the leaders in Parliament a 
body of men whose ideals were thorough and con- 
sistent, and who did not allow the Liberals to 
stagnate after their first success. The virile minds of 
Bentham and James Mill understood and proclaimed 



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The Whigs and their Work, 235 

the sovereignty of the people ; and, moreover, they 
indicated with amazing clearness the method whereby 
internal and social reform should be carried into 
effect. 
- Bentham lived just long enough to see the Reform 
Bill carried into effect. James Mill passed on the 
mantle to his yet greater son. Grote was to be for 
many years a pillar of philosophic Liberalism. But 
if any proof were needed that the men of 1832 were 
no mere timid " Whigs " intent on their own privi- 
leges, it would be found in the torrent of remedial 
legislation which marked the next few years. First 
and greatest of all stands the Poor Law Reform of 1834. 
We have mentioned the " Speenhamland Act," and 
have alluded to the enormous evils it inflicted on the 
labourers. The evil had no whit abated. The rates 
were enormous, the land was in some places going 
out of cultivation, the condition of the agricultural 
labourer was miserable beyond words. Yet, thanks 
to the Corn Laws, rents were high, and the squires 
were in full enjoyment of what was, in relation to 
the misery of other classes, the fattest prosperity. 
The system of socialism under which the labourer 
lived was complete. All thrift and industry, every 
quality which goes to the making of a citizen, was 
taken from him — " he was an artificial creation, not a 
natural product of the race." 

At one blow the whole fabric was swept away. 
The workhouse test was imposed. Outdoor relief was 



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236 The Historic Basis of Lirerausm. 

limited ; indeed, if the commissioners had prevailed, 
it would have been entirely done away with. Once 
again the individual was called upon to struggle for 
himself, not to look for support from the community. 
The Poor Laws of the past forty years had been an 
interesting socialistic experiment, and an admirable 
lesson for succeeding generations. The clear and 
resolute ideas of the Liberal thinkers had triumphed 
over prejudice and mistaken philanthropy. 

At the same time that this great reform was passed 
something was done to remedy the abuses of the Irish 
Church and the tithe question. Slavery was finally 
abolished, and public money was at last devoted to 
education, one of the most patent needs of the 
country. The town corporations were reformed, and 
town government put upon a more popular and 
representative basis. It would take up too much 
space to enumerate all the reforms effected during 
the years which followed 1832. 

But the condition of England was still unhappy 
in the extreme. Bread was enormously dear — an 
artificial monopoly created for the benefit of the 
landowners. There was much want and discontent ; 
the evil effects of half a century of Tory government 
were not so easily got rid of. About 1840 came the 
Chartist agitation. The charter was a demand for 
universal suffrage, annual Parliaments, and the ballot. 
•It was a natural result of the miseries of the time. 
It will be seen that its provisions have by no means 



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The Corn Laws. 237 

been fully carried into law. As to annual Parlia- 
ments, this cry seems to have disappeared. For 
some occult reason, the mystic number seven (in 
practice, six) years, seems to work satisfactorily as 
the limit to a Parliament's duration. Whether the 
Septennial Act will remain on the Statute Book for 
ever is doubtful ; but, at any rate, little agitation 
against it can be seen at the present day. Universal 
manhood suffrage, however, is a more important 
matter. "One man one vote" is an all-important but 
still unfulfilled item of the traditional Liberal pro- 
gramme. We are still some distance from its fulfil- 
ment, and the road thither has been one of difficulty. 
But assuredly that has been no fault of the Liberal 
party. 

After the year 1841 the Com Laws became the 
question of the day. The population was increasing 
fast The amount of com the country could produce 
was necessarily limited, and, as foreign wheat was 
jealously kept out, it was difficult to feed the popula- 
tion. It became absolutely necessary that the duties 
on the import of corn should be done away with. At 
this great crisis men were found of consummate 
coun^e and strength for the fight. One of them, the 
Hon. Charles Villiers, is among us to this day, the last 
survivor of a great band, and the first member of the 
House of Commons to advocate complete Free Trade ; 
but, without in any way disparaging the sterling work 
he did, it will be readily admitted that to two other 



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238 The Historic Basis op Liberalism. 

men belongs the chief glory — ^to John Bright and 
Richard Cobden. They did incalculable good to 
England, and they are two of the best examples of 
the Liberal mind that could well be found. When 
Sir Robert Peel accepted and carried through the 
principle of Free Trade, he frankly admitted that the 
credit both for his own conversion and for that of the 
country was due to ''the unadorned eloquence of 
Richard Cobden." That great thinker took his 
stand on broad, logical grounds. He gave up time 
and money to the cause in which he believed, and it 
was his unflinching energy that made England a 
free-trading country. 

Of John Bright it is hard to say anything which 
would not sound the merest commonplace. He 
embodied some of the best qualities of the race. 
His eloquence moved men to the depths of their 
nature because it was instinct with the loftiest pur- 
pose, with that moral seriousness which is con- 
spicuous in the English character even to excess. 
But no trace of cant marked the words and thoughts 
of John Bright. Everything he said came from the 
very heart of the man. 

His Liberalism was a creed that appealed to 
everything that was noble in humanity :J it was 
animated by great ideals ; it had no hint of oppor- 
tunism, of materialism. It may not be amiss to 
quote a few of his words to show the spirit which 
animated John Bright Speaking in favour of Free 



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John Bright. 239 

Trade in Coven t Garden Theatre on December 19th, 
1845, "It IS a struggle," he said, "between the 
numbers, wealth, comforts — the all, in fact — of the 
middle and industrious classes, and the wealth, the 
union, and sordidness of a large section of the 
aristocracy of this empire ; and we have to decide 
. . . . now in this great struggle, whether in 
this land in which we live, we will longer bear the 
wicked legislation to which we have been subjected, 
or whether we will make one effort to right the vessel, 
to keep her in her true course, and, if possible, to 
bring her safely to a secure haven. Our object, as 
the people, can only be, that we should have good 
and impartial government for everybody. As the 
whole people, we can by no possibility have the 
smallest interest in any partial or unjust legislation ; 
we do not wish to sacrifice any right of the richest or 
most powerful class, but we are resolved that that class 
shall not sacrifice the rights of a whole people." This 
quotation is but one among many which might have 
been chosen to illustrate his attitude. He stood for 
justice in all things, and his whole political life was a 
long struggle against the inequalities around him. 
Almost alone of English statesmen, he sided with 
the American Federals from the very first. 

The Free Trade movement is interesting from 
several points of view. It was emphatically a struggle 
of classes. For generations the landowners had 
dominated English politics. We have sketched their 



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240 The Historic Basis op Liberalism. 

power and its sources during the eighteenth century. 
Step by step their monopoly had been threatened 
and undermined by an increase in trade and manu- 
factures, by the mere growth of population. But, 
with the blindness that characterises an unjust cause, 
they thought that their rule would be continued for 
ever, and that a little strengthening to their power 
was the one thing needful. Thus they passed the 
celebrated Com Law of 181 5, which — not to refine 
overmuch — prohibited the importation of any foreign 
wheat. The landed interest was thus protected "with 
a wall of brass " ; and, indeed, it was on no higher 
grounds than the necessity of protecting the land- 
owners that arguments for the Corn Laws were based. 
The attitude of Protectionists was naively selfish ; 
they put the good of their own class before that of 
the nation ; they did their best to exasperate the 
feeling between rich and poor, to bring on a strife 
of classes — and they succeeded. The political situa- 
tion of the present day is largely an antagonism 
of classes; there has arisen a mutual exasperation 
difficult of removal and profoundly dangerous to the 
future of the nation. 

Another characteristic of the Free Trade move- 
ment was that it lay outside party lines. At first the 
Whigs — many of them great landowners — were as 
hostile to Free Trade as the Tories themselves. Lord 
Melbourne spoke solemnly of the " madness " of the 
movement, and there were many weaker-minded 



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Free Trade, 241 

Liberals who felt as he did. But the whole party — 
Liberals and Whigs alike — soon came round; they 
were convinced by the eloquence of Bright and the 
logic of Cobden. From the moment Sir Robert Peel, 
the Conservative leader, avowed his conversion, the 
speedy victory of the Free Traders was assured. 
Though the monopolists, led by Disraeli — who now 
leapt to the front — fought to the last gasp, the measure 
was carried through with a rush. Here, at any rate, 
reformers had no cause to complain of those half- 
measures, of that weak-kneed compromise which 
defaces nearly all the tardy acts of justice that are 
rendered to the workers. 

England at once experienced an expansive influ- 
ence without equal in her history. Her prosperity 
increased beyond all knowledge ; the fetters were 
struck off, and the nation could move freely at last. 
It is frequently asserted that the workers have pro- 
fited less by the reform than should be the case, and 
that the manufacturers used their power nearly as 
selfishly as the territorial oligarchy which they dis- 
placed. But when we look back fifty years we shall 
be forced to recognise the very great progress which 
all classes in the community have made, and the 
immense rise in the standard of comfort which has 
signalised the victory of the Manchester school. 

The timely reform of 1846 saved England from 
the revolution of 1848. Abroad the Tory riginu of 
the Holy Alliance at last proved intolerable, and 
Q 



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242 The Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

outraged Europe rose in arms. England escaped 
with nothing worse than a few riots. The fore- 
thought and wisdom of the Liberals had been 
justified. Many wrongs had been redressed, and 
England, unlike other countries, had no grievance 
that could blaze into revolution. But from one point 
of view it may be regarded as a pity that England 
was so little touched by the revolutionary fervour of 
that year. Our own security blinded us to the 
wrongs of Ireland. Had we been more embarrassed, 
we might have lent more willing attention to the 
complaints of that land. As it was, the Fenian agita- 
tion of that year produced few results. The methods 
of the agitators were doubtless indefensible. But the 
wrongs of Ireland were great enough to goad the 
most peaceful into revolt 

Every agrarian evil which flourished in England 
was exasperated tenfold on Irish soil. The stranger 
ruled, the stranger enjoyed, and the native starved. 
During the famine, the monopolists of England 
forbade the opening of the Irish ports to foreign 
grain. Men died in hundreds, and the survivors 
emigrated. The feelings of those that remained grew 
yet more bitter against the step-mother who had 
ruined their land. But there was a limit to the re- 
forming impulses of the Liberals of those days ; those 
impulses stopped short of Ireland, and the question 
of the Irish peasantry was left untouched till Mr. 
Gladstone addressed himself to the task. 



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Lord Palmerston. 243 

In fact, the whole reforming impulse had for the 
moment worn itself out. Lord John Russell's career 
was past its meridian. Sir Robert Peel died in 1850. 
Mr. Gladstone had not yet shaken off his Toryism ; and 
Lord Palmerston was, after 1854, the only possible 
leader. From 1846 to 1867 the nation moved for- 
ward but little. The causes are not far to seek — the 
middle class had settled down to enjoy its victory. 
Its ideals were vulgar, and its rule had a perceptibly 
materialist, Philistine tone. Twenty years of smug 
prosperity intervened between two great epochs of 
progress and reform. These years found in Lord 
Palmerston a fitting leader. 

This statesman's career practically fills the home 
affairs of England from 1850 to 1865. His influence 
was immense down to the end of his career, and a 
sketch of his character must be attempted. He was, 
perhaps, the most unideal man who ever ruled the 
country, Pelham and North not excepted. His 
whole tone of mind was pitched low. With high- 
flown enthusiasms of any sort he had no patience. 
He had no love for reform at home, and during his 
years of power did practically nothing for internal 
questions. He was a bluff, off-hand man, whose 
essentially Philistine and Jingo mind was infinitely 
pleasing to the average middle-class Englishman. 
Probably the general moral tone of politics was 
rarely lower than during his administration. 

But in his foreign policy Palmerston played a wholly 
Q 2 



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244 TVzfl Historic Basis op Liberalism. 

different rdle. Somewhere in his commonplace nature 
existed a genuine sympathy for oppressed peoples, 
and this sympathy he showed on many occasions. He 
lectured Foreign Governments on their iniquities, and 
explained to them that they could not hope to rule 
successfully till they had imitated the Parliamentary 
institutions of England. It cannot be said that he 
rendered very effective help to the insurgents of 
Hungary or Italy. But he winked at the assistance 
— men, money, ntatSriel—^Nhxch was given them un- 
grudgingly by private Englishmen. On the whole, it 
is certain that his attitude towards the revolution- 
aries of Europe did help on their cause. Side by 
side with this, however, was the amazing short- 
sightedness which induced Palmerston to approve 
Louis Napoleon's coup d'itat of 1851, and thus to 
commit England to an approval of one of the worst 
adventurers who ever reached a throne. 

Palmerston's supremacy is not a particularly 
glorious page in our history. Reforming zeal during 
the years of his administration was at a very low 
ebb ; but, as his career drew to a close there came 
a man who was destined to restore the apparently 
broken continuity, and carry out with fearless vigour 
the necessary changes demanded by the growth of 
Liberal feeling. Mr. Gladstone began life as a Tory, 
and remained with that party till middle age. He 
formed a strong attachment to Sir Robert Peel, and 
was converted with hitn to Free Trade. For some 



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Mr. Gladstone's Early Years. 245 

years after Peel's death he was still to outward 
seeming a Conservative; but he had shown him- 
self capable of moving with the times, and in 1851 
had proved his sympathy with the oppressed by 
his denunciations of King " Bomba." He established 
his position by his attack on Disraeli's Budget of 
1852, and by his own Budget of the year following. 
But the fall of Lord Aberdeen, owing to his mis- 
management of the Crimean War, deprived Mr. 
Gladstone of office till 1859. Then, with the forma- 
tion of Palmerston's last Ministry, he took up once 
again the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. The 
time of stagnation was nearly over. Mr. Gladstone 
was to begin the new era of change, and in so doing 
to announce himself a Liberal once for all. In 1864 
a private member brought in a Reform motion — more, 
we may imagine, to ease his own conscience than 
from any hope of success. Mr. Gladstone suddenly 
threw down the gauntlet. It was for the upper, the 
privileged, classes to prove "the unworthiness, the 
incapacity, and the misconduct of the* working 
classes." From this moment Mr. Gladstone had 
broken with Peelism, as before with Toryism ; he 
was now a Liberal, the champion of Reform, of 
political justice. 

Palmerston died just after the General Election of 
1865. Earl Russell — better known as Lord John 
Russell — became Premier, with Mr. Gladstone as his 
Leader in the Commons. The Government Reform 



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246 Thr Historic Basis of Liberausm. 

Bill was beaten, thanks to the immortal '' Cave of 
Adullam." But the delay mattered little. Lord 
Derby and Mr. Disraeli brought in a Bill of their own, 
which, after a vast amount of queer antics and un- 
dignified concessions, became law in August, 1867. 
The second great stage had been reached: the 
working men had at last been admitted to political 
responsibility. Though this measure created in- 
finitely less noise and disturbance than its more 
famous predecessor, it was a far greater revolu- 
tion. The Bill of 1832 added less than half a million 
voters to the register ; that of 1867 added some 
1,300,000. When the General Election took place in 
the November of 1868, the Liberals swept the country ; 
the new voters recognised who had given them their 
power, and returned them as their representatives in 
a majority of nearly 130. Earl Russell was grown 
old, Mr. Gladstone stood forward as unquestioned 
leader ; he became Prime Minister, and held office 
till 1874. 

He proved at once how complete was his faith 
in Liberalism by attacking and destroying one abuse 
after another. The Established Church of Ireland 
was the first object to which he turned. Its position 
was indefensible ; its tenets had no hold on the Irish 
people. The usual outcry of spoliation was raised, 
but the. principles of Mr. Gladstone's Bill were so 
obviously just that the opposition collapsed. This 
was the beginning of that long struggle for Irish rights 



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Mr, Gladstone's Reforms. 247 

which only ended for him with his retirement from 
public life. Following this came the great Education 
Bill which established School Boards throughout the 
land. The Bill was absolutely necessary, for national 
education was at a lower ebb in England than in any 
other great European country. No country can exist 
where ignorance is the normal condition of its citizens. 
Since its introduction, the moral condition of the 
people has improved enormously, and in another 
generation " the illiterate " will have disappeared from 
among us. But as the politics of education are ex- 
haustively dealt with elsewhere, it is unnecessary here 
to discuss the Compromise of 1870. One reform 
followed another. After a struggle with the Lords, 
University tests — the last remnant of religious 
bigotry — ^were removed. Purchase in the army — that 
stronghold of aristocracy — ^was abolished, Mr. Glad- 
stone securing his end by a species of coup d'etat 
Finally, after a long struggle, the Ballot Act became 
law, and some of the worst forms of electoral intimida- 
tion were henceforth rendered impossible. From this 
moment the employ^ and the tenant could vote as he 
liked, with less fear of the employer or the squire 
depriving him of his means of livelihood. 

The General Election of 1874 brings us to com- 
paratively modern times. The struggle was fought 
upon both sides by men still in the fulness of politi- 
cal life. The questions at issue twenty years ago are 
still undecided. Events have come to pass whereby 



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248 The Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

the issues have been complicated, but the main out- 
line of the struggle remains unaltered. The land, 
education, the privileged classes — these three items 
still lack settlement or finality. 

It is important^p grasp the meaning of the great 
Liberal defeat or 1^74^ Mr. Gladstone's Government 
of the previous five years had accomplished an enor- 
mous amount of work. Its labours can only be 
compared, as regards extent, with those of the first 
reformed Parliament. The privileges of the Irish 
Church were gone. University tests had disappeared, 
and the effort to create a national system of educa- 
tion had at last been brought to a successful issue. 
There arose the inevitable cry, " The country is going 
too fast ! " Many people were frightened ; many 
vested interests or abuses had been touched. The 
educational "compromise" had displeased the Dis- 
senters, who, at the General Election of 1874, drew 
away from the Liberal party in large numbers. A 
section of the people " oriented " from their old creed, 
and turned the scale in favour of Mr. Disraeli and his 
party. The timid, the slothful, longed for an era of 
quiet and repose. They did not want any further 
legislation, and their votes threw the country into 
the hands of the Conservatives for six years. 

It is hard to describe adequately the character of 
the Disraeli Ministry of 1874 to 1880 without using 
the abuse of the gutter. No Ministry ever received 
more noisy and boisterous praise while in power ; no 



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Mr. Disraeli and his Party, 249 

Ministry, it would seem, was ever looked back to 
with such passionate regret by its supporters. Its 
chief was lauded to the skies ; its watchwords and 
catch-phrases can be met with on platforms at the 
present day. Yet it is safe to say that no Ministry 
of modern times has been more thoroughly bad or ^ 
worked greater harm to the community. It left 
behind an evil trail of false glory and false ideals 
from which the nation suffers even now. The 
Ministry was essentially that of one man ; its leader 
alone was of importance. Lord Salisbury hardly 
rose to eminence till its last two years, and of 
respectable nonentities like Gathome Hardy and Sir 
Richard Cross one need say nothing. To criticise 
the Ministry is to discuss Lord Beaconsfield. His 
rise to power and the great influence he obtained 
over his party have often been the subject of much 
comment and wonder. Nor is this wonder unreason- 
able. He was a Jew, and almost a foreigner ; at any 
rate, quite uninfluenced by the prejudices of his 
fellow-countrymen. His career had been chequered. 
He had once posed as a Radical. He had risen to 
notoriety by his virulent advocacy of the landed 
interest at the time of the Com Law repeal. For 
that landed interest, its selfishness, its ignorance, its 
economic fallacies, he must have had in his heart the 
most profound contempt. But "he took the shot, 
and it hit" From the moment of his furious attack 
on Sir Robert Peel he stood forward as the one and 



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250 The Historic Basis of Libera lism. 

only man who could lead the Tory party in the 
future. He had to wait more than a quarter of a 
century for the consummation of his triumph ; but it 
came at last, in 1874. Then for the first time he led 
the Commons with a real majority behind him. His 
opportunity, for which he had waited with infinite 
patience, had come. What would he do with it } 

He had conceived that amazing idea known in 
the abstract as " Tory Democracy," in the concrete 
as "the Conservative working man." If this idea 
has any meaning beyond the temporary needs of an 
election cry, it is that the working men and their 
votes are to be used by the dominant classes for their 
own ends. They are to be deluded by promises of 
" social reform," better dwelling-houses, healthier 
conditions of life, and higher wages, thanks to the 
wise providence of a Tory Government. It is no 
new thing for the leaders of a privileged body to 
pose as the guardians of the classes below. It is a 
familiar device in politics — one that needs no ex- 
planation. But two criticisms may be laid down 
as universally applicable to such a cry — first, that 
it is flagrantly dishonest ; and, secondly, that the 
lower classes will not fail to repudiate the intrigue 
in time. Such a cry is, in fact, the last manoeuvre 
of a despairing oligarchy, driven to maintain its 
privileges by feigning to protect those whom it has 
oppressed. Let us see how the idea worked between 
1874 and 1880. 



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Tory Policy at Home, 251 

The Statute Book is studded with Acts giving to 
the labourers the power of doing and acquiring 
various things. They are " allowed " to have better 
dwellings, " permitted " to work under more sanitary 
conditions, " encouraged " to acquire allotments.^ The 
Conservative Government, in its paternal wisdom, 
graciously allowed the labourer certain permissive 
rights, which in any sound, healthy community 
ought to have been compulsorily secured. But the 
Ministry were very careful not to " do " or " establish " 
anything, for fear of taking something from the privi- 
leges of their class. Their statutes had little or no 
result. And the only marvel is, that the working 
classes, having been tricked so thoroughly and so re- 
cently by the Tories, should have trusted them again. 
But Disraeli's home policy merits further notice. 
Among political reforms, one was certainly insist- 
ent — the Agricultural Franchise. A Bill for giving to 
the country labourers that power of voting which was 
vouchsafed to the boroughs in 1867 was introduced 
by Sir George Trevelyan in 1874, 1875, 1876, 
1878, and 1879. In each case it was rejected by 
large majorities. And this simple fact shows the 
worth of "permissive" and "concessive" measures. 
Yet, during these, years, the condition of the 
agricultural labourer was wretched in the extreme — 

^ A good instance of this kind of legislation is the Agricultural 
Holdings Act of 1875. It allowed compensation for unexhausted 
improvements, " in cases where landlords and tenants have not objected 
to coming under the Act " ! 



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252 The Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

1875 marks the appearance of Joseph Arch and the 
formation of agricultural trades unions. Matters were 
going ill with the rural population ; but the landed 
interest is sacred, and its monopoly is not to be 
violated by reform. With the other items of 
Disraeli's home policy we need not deal. The 
opposition to PlimsoU was dictated by a different 
oligarchy — the trading and shipping interest; but 
the motive was the same. Nor does the monstrous 
Slave Circular of 1875 call for lengthy comment. 
It has long since passed into the dust-heap, but 
it is none the less one more striking proof of the 
Tory distrust of personal liberty — even in its most 
elementary form. 

But the foreign policy of Disraeli is interesting — 
especially since we are suffering from it to this day. 

He was, as we have said, an Oriental, and his 
views and ideals were vulgar through and through. 
He debauched the English mind with false ideals of 
Empire; he set up a painted and gaudy goddess 
whom he asked us to worship ; he ended by linking 
England's future with that of the most rotten, cruel, 
and indefensible Government that Europe has ever 
seen.^ To parallel the rule of Disraeli in modern 
times, we must look to Napoleon III. and his 

^ This is no figure of speech. Russia under Ivan the Terrible, the 
Low Countries under Alva, never experienced corruption, theft, in- 
tolerance, and massacre as a system of government. Wildly evil though 
Christian Governments have at times been, they have always con- 
demned their excesses in anticipation by pointing to the extraordinary 



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The Tory as Turcophile. 253 

nineteen years ^of rule in France. For both of these 
leaders were adventurers at bottom. Each strove to 
exploit his country. Each succeeded in corrupting 
it with false ideals. Each sought to perpetuate his 
power by leading the people away from the true line 
of national advance. France, in 1850, England in 
1874, were equally in need of internal reform, of an 
extension of political responsibility. Both received 
instead the rule of a selfish adventurer, who desired 
to fill men's minds with wind, and to flatter all their 
more vulgar instincts. We may add, that had 
England not been an island, she would have met a 
similar punishment to that which befel France. 

The facts of Beaconsfield's policy are well known. 
The Turkish Government was not worse than usual 
— only a little more outri. And the Servians and 
Bulgarians rose. They were suppressed, and with 
circumstances of horror which no -tone — save Sir Ellis 
Ashmead-Bartlett^ — now disbelieves for one moment. 
No man in the habit of weighing evidence should have 
disbelieved them in 1876. But the Government chose 
to express "unqualified nescience" concerning the 
disturbance in the Balkans. By the treaty of 1856 
it was bound to see that the Porte reformed its ways, 
and treated its subject populations well. England 

and abnormal conditions of the moment. They never made of those 
excesses a regular rule, a guiding principle of administration. 

* "The Hon. Member for the Yildiz division of Constantinople/' 
as Mr. Haldspie has called him. 



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254 ^^^ Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

had never raised a finger to .i^^rry these articles into 
effect. Russia undertook to perform this vital office 
for her. After great difficulties and many mistakes, 
the Russians took Plevna, and captured the last 
Turkish army in the Shipka Pass. Constantinople 
lay open, and Skobeleff was at its gates. England 
was therefore at the cross-roads. Either she might 
allow Skobeleff to right the wrongs of centuries, or 
she might boldly oppose Russia's further advance. 
In the event she did neither. She tore up the 
San Stefano Treaty, and forced the compromise of 
Berlin, whereby she received Cyprus, and guaranteed 
the further existence of a despotism which has not 
renounced one jot of its savagery since it came under 
the patronage of Tory Cabinets and Cockney music- 
halls. The past two years are a sermon on the text 
of the Berlin Treaty, so striking and so awful that I 
will add no word. nThe year of the Treaty of Berlin 
saw the outbreak of a war prompted by the same 
motive. Beaconsfield attacked Afghanistan because 
he feared Russian influence in Central Asia. The 
Afghans were not particularly powerful, and the 
nation did not gain any great glory in triumphing 
over them. Yet this triumph was only won at 
great cost, and it illustrated to the full the false 
ideals which animated Beaconsfield's foreign policy. 
When he returned from Berlin, he announced to 
England that he brought ''Peace with Honour." 
During the weeks when it lay in the balance whether 



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The Treaty of Berlin, 255 

England would go to war with Russia or not, the 
clubs and music-halls rang with an unintelligent 
applause. Mysterious catch-words anent *^ Scientific 
Frontiers," " Peace and Empire,*' caught hold of a 
section of the nation. They were allowing the 
Government to adopt towards Russia the most fatal 
of all policies — " willing to wound, and yet afraid to 
strike." But they were so enchanted with the vulgar, 
" mysterious " attitude of Lord Beaconsfield and his 
followers, that they applauded to the echo his rarest 
work of national dishonour, the Treaty of Berlin. 
It needed all Mr. Gladstone's moral force and 
earnestness to bring the nation back to a sense of its 
duties. But a bad thing once done is not swept 
away all at once, and traces of Lord Beaconsfield's 
flamboyant policy can be seen to-day. The Jingoes 
who broke Mr. Gladstone's windows had no sus- 
picion that their leader was ** putting his money on 
the wrong horse," and they did not know that 
Lord Salisbury already felt the " misgivings " which 
it has taken him nineteen years to express.' " Lord 
Beaconsfield is dead " only when the idol of Primrose 
dames is reduced to disclaiming a policy which he 
cannot defend. In any case it is through Lord 
Beaconsfield that England stands committed to a 
false attitude as regards the Turkish Empire. We 
have spent much space over the Ministry of 1874 

^ Vide Lord Salisbury's speech on the Address in the Lords, 
January 20th, 1897. 



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2S6 The Historic Basis of Liberalism, 

because only by stripping off the false glamour 
wherewith Conservatives have surrounded it can we 
account for the overwhelming victory of the Liberal 
Party in 1880. The General Election declared em- 
phatically that the nation was not to be led away by 
the hollow rhetoric and debasing ideals of Con- 
servative foreign policy. 

As the Liberal Ministry of 1880 has received the 
most unmeasured abuse, it may be as well to point 
out what it actually did achieve. It attempted reso- 
lutely to deal with the question of Irish land. Ireland 
had been so persistently put on one side by the 
Governments of the past that any measure of relief 
to the tenant was welcome, however imperfect its 
details. Mr. Gladstone's Bill of 188 1 did effect some- 
thing to stop the worst horrors of eviction, to prevent 
landlords from confiscating tenants* improvements, 
and to begin the system of Land Purchase which is 
now yielding such excellent results. The Act may 
not have been a complete remedy; yet it healed 
many evils, and gave some justice to the Irish 
peasant. That it met with violent opposition from 
the House of Lords was only what might have been 
expected. Something in the same direction was ac- 
complished for England in the Agricultural Holdings 
Act of 1883. Unlike its predecessor of 1875, it gave 
the landlords no power to evade its provisions. But 
the greatest work of the 1880 Administration was 
the Reform Bill of 1884 — the third of that name 



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The Liberals of 1880. 257 

and the most sweeping. It added some two million 
voters to the electorate, and was therefore, as far as 
numbers go, a greater change than the Act of 1832. 
It was opposed by the Tories both in the Lords and 
Commons. The reasons for this opposition were 
plausible ; the underlying feeling was in any case 
clear. The Tories were jealous of this invasion of 
their stronghold ; they grudged to the portion of the 
nation that was most backward this chance of raising 
Itself and assuming the duties of citizenship. 

That the Ministry of 1880 was guilty of very 
grievous mistakes may be at once conceded. Let me 
go boldly to the most grievous of them all. The story 
of General Grordon is an unfortunate page in our his- 
tory. The Ministry failed to meet — ^perhaps to realise 
— the peril in which he was placed until too late. His 
death remains unquestionably a very grave blot on 
the record of that Government. The incident was used 
by Tory speakers as a proof that a Liberal Govern- 
ment cannot manage foreign affairs. Khartoum 
blotted out of men's minds the blunders of Lord 
Beaconsfield, the story of Isandula, Candahar, Mai- 
wand, and Berlin. It remains, I firmly believe, a 
source of weakness to Liberalism even at this moment. 
But, even at its worst, it is not an indictment that 
should outweigh for one moment the great services 
done to the country by the Ministry of 1880. 

After that Ministry had disappeared on a side issue 
— the Budget proposals of 1885 — Ireland .suddenly 
R 



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258 The Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

became the one " burning question " of the day. Mr. 
Gladstone announced his acceptance of the principle 
of Home Rule. How far the Conservative leaders 
had played with the idea will hardly be known in 
our time. But they condemned Home Rule as one 
man, so soon as Mr. Gladstone and his followers took 
it up. Subsequent events are too well known to 
need repetition. Many of his followers split off from 
him — the waverers were pulled this way and that 
under conflicting influence. And, indeed, it needed 
a man of independence and courage to accept an 
idea which, though so old in principle, was so new 
in application. We can hardly wonder that some of 
the weaker-hearted were in much perplexity as to 
what they should do. Briefly, the Home Rule Bill 
was beaten in the Commons, and the "Unionist" 
Coalition — to give it its accepted name — swept the 
country at the polls. Once again the nation settled 
down to six years of Conservative rule. This is 
hardly the time to view the movement for Home 
Rule in a calm light. It is not past history — ^it is 
a story of which we have not yet heard the end ; its 
conclusion is inevitable, however long it may be in 
coming. Two or three points may, however, be 
indicated. 

It has been a common sneer with the Tories that 
Mr. Gladstone only accepted Home Rule when the 
General Election of 1885 had returned parties so 
evenly balanced that the Nationalists held the key 



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Home Rule. 259 

to the situation. Such a sneer may be put aside as 
trivial and impertinent. The General Election of 
1886 was the first that had taken place under the 
widened franchise. And the Irish votes, now cast 
for the first time, declared emphatically for Home 
Rule and the Nationalist party.^ The Irish nation 
had spoken; about the unanimity of its utterance 
there could now be no doubt. Mr. Gladstone and 
the Liberals were convinced. 

Of those who left Liberalism at that time, many 
were certain to go sooner or later. They were the 
weaker brethren, who felt their interests threatened, 
who lacked faith in the future and in the people, and 
they have found a haven of rest. Secondly, that 
Liberals of all classes accepted the light as soon as a 
man arose to show it forth implied a self-abnegation 
and a love of abstract justice that recalls the early 
days of Liberalism. They had been taught to dis- 
trust and fear the Home Rule movement ; they had 
condemned its tactics and its champions. Yet when 
the issue was put plainly to them, they took the true 
path, caring only to right the wrongs of Ireland so 
far as in them lay. That it was a sacrifice is only 
the superficial view.' But, from that moment, 

^ Lord Randolph Churchill had prophesied that the widened 
franchise in Ireland would mean a serious diminution of the Nationalist 
strength. 

' ''I do not understand the word 'sacrifices' applied to a move- 
ment which has for its end something which those who took part in 
that movement believe to be of sovereign good both for Ireland and for 
this island."— Rt. Hon. John Morfey, M.P., at Oxford, Feb. 20, 1897. 

R 2 



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26o The Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

in the eyes of the genteel, the correct section of 
society, Liberalism became more than ever a danger- 
ous and discreditable creed. 

Lastly, due homage must be rendered to the 
Nationalist party. They have been called adven- 
turers, publicans and sinners. Every kind of insinua- 
tion, of sneer, of abuse has been their portion. Yet 
whenever we get a little below the surface and dis- 
cover how they lived — their sacrifices, their constancy, 
the hardships they endured — ^we shall applaud their 
devotion and reverence their patriotism. Their 
struggle against English insolence and injustice is 
a creditable page in Parliamentary history. But the 
credit goes to the Celtic fringe. 

During the next six years Ireland continued to 
occupy the front place. Coercion Bills were passed, 
and many parts of the land were treated like a 
besieged town. Indeed, for a time, there was'almost 
civil war. That comparative peace reigns once again 
in Ireland may possibly be due not so much to the 
Crimes Acts as to the series of Land Bills enacted at 
intervals during these years. Credit be where it is 
due: the Land Act of 1887 did much to help the 
Irish peasant. His rent was made less crushing, 
and he could purchase his land on easier terms. 
For the rest, those years show a chequered record. 
Men still dispute as to the precise meaning of the 
Parnell Commission ; and the effects of the Nationalist 
split are still painfully evident. Whether Home Rule 



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m^^^^^m^^^mmm^mmmmm i ii i ii ■l ii l ii w iaiiiWiMWBMB— — ^—iW 



The Labour Question. 261 

may be accomplished shortly or not is a question 
that may be left to the political prophet ; but, at any 
rate, the Irish Question is very far from the state of 
deadness which the Tories desire for it. 

If we are to look at the Ministry of 1886 from the 
point of view of 1897, we shall have to confess that 
the country was in face of a question yet more 
absorbing than Ireland. The condition of the work- 
ing classes is at all times more insecure than that of 
the capitalists ; they are never altogether free from 
anxiety or want. A depression in trade, which 
means to the capitalist the sacrifice of a yacht or a 
country house, may mean literal starvation to the 
workers. But, at any rate, from 1886 onwards, 
the Labour Question forced itself to the front, and 
it is now the great question of the day. We can 
summarise the mental change by saying that we now 
hear the word " social " where " political " used to be 
the common epithet. It is to the relations of classes 
and to the distribution of wealth that men now turn 
their eyes. Purely political questions appear to have 
fallen into the background ; the change is already 
seen in the attitude of thinkers and publicists. In 
fact, the older political economy, in the eyes of many, 
has become discredited. A large instalment of free 
trade has only doubled wages and incomes. It has 
not brought England to the millennium which some 
foolish enthusiasts had looked for. 

The capitalist — it is asserted by the illiberal and 



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262 The Historic Basis of Liberalism, 

the ignorant — has reaped all the benefits of the in- 
crease in national wealth. The workman has been 
used and thrown on one side. The unemployed are 
numerous, and their numbers are used as an argu- 
ment to prove that the working man is little better off 
than he was before 1846. The distribution of wealth, 
we are told, is most unequal, and thus the very school 
which took the first step in redressing the balance is 
now accused of having introduced the inequality. 
Property, it is argued, has far more duties than 
rights. If necessary, property must be confiscated by 
the State, and held as a national trust. This is the 
theory urged by all CoUectivist writers. The data 
upon which the attack on the Manchester school 
is based are examined elsewhere in this book, and 
are found to be distorted or non-existent. The ideas 
are not new ; they found many upholders in the early 
part of the century. But the needs of the time give 
them a new meaning. During the last ten years 
Socialism has been in all men's mouths. 

On the practical side, this Labour Question — for 
so we must call it — absorbed more and more at- 
tention. There were riots of the unemployed in 
February, 1886, and in November, 1887. The trades 
unions were growing in strength, till nearly every 
trade had its union, to which most of its workers 
adhered. Then came the Dock Strike of 1889. 
This was an event of infinite importance, and the 
impression it left on the minds of men was deep 



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The Dock Strike. 263 

and lasting. For weeks the greatest port in the 
world was idle : London was filled with workers on 
strike. To any unprejudiced man, it was at once 
clear that on the main issue the strikers were right. 
They had been working in a most precarious wise, 
for a miserable wage. They had been oppressed by 
the Dock Companies ; if they were not to be ground 
into serfdom, it was necessary that they should resist 
resolutely. The struggle was long and bitter. The 
companies held on to their unjust position with the 
morbid tenacity which always assists a rotten and 
oppressive privilege. How they were beaten, and 
how Cardinal Manning came forward to heal the 
quarrel, everybody knows. But from that moment 
the working classes and the distribution of wealth 
claimed the first place in men's notice. The cry 
grew steadily, "We have had enough of Ireland; 
for Heaven's sake, let us look nearer home." Thus 
Ireland lost its position of absorbing importance : 
it became a secondary matter ; social questions, and 
above all the Labour Problem, took its place. On 
this latter the fate of the Liberal party will inevitably 
turn. 

But before dealing with the present situation we 
must just touch on the main events of the past few 
years. The Conservative Government of 1886 had 
no lack of energy. It fulfilled an essentially 
Liberal pledge by increasing the scope of local 
self-government. It created County Councils. Of 



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r^ 



264 The Historic Basis of Liberalism, 

their work it would be premature to speak. 
London alone may be mentioned. In spite of mis- 
takes — whereof the Tories have been swift to take 
account — the condition of the capital has been im- 
proved very greatly. Its state under the old Vestry 
system was a disgrace to the empire. London was 
the worst-governed capital in Europe. It is now 
in a fair way to be the best. Though much hampered 
by the moribund vestries and by the Corporation, 
the County Council is doing great things for London. 
It has worked on broad lines, and it has nearly 
always possessed an active and progressive majority. 
It has become a parliament in miniature, of an im- 
portance that grows daily. But by far its best work 
has been to inspire among Londoners a civic feeling 
of which they had previously been totally devoid. 

In granting free education (1891) the Conser- 
vatives completed one of the measures that has been 
the particular property of Liberalism. It is difficult 
to convince some of our opponents, even to this day, 
that money spent on education is not a mistake. 
They have declaimed loudly against the lavish ex- 
penditure of Board schools, and have declared that a 
small modicum of education — say " the three R's " — 
is enough for the children of working men. Now, 
it shows a singular blindness not to recognise that 
our national education has been most inferior in 
the past to that of foreign countries, and that 
England has suflfered in consequence. But this point 



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A Liberal Ministry Once More, 265 

is developed elsewhere : what we would wish to make 
absolutely clear is this — of all the needs and cries 
of the present day, none has a more purely abstract 
end than education. Its practical results are out of 
sight, or only to be seen when we compare the 
commerce and wealth of relatively educated and 
uneducated nations. You cannot see the effect of 
education as you see the effect of a new invention. 
Its value is a matter of faith. That is to say, those, 
who believe in education, who are eager for its 
success and firm for its continued improvement, are 
animated by that belief in ideals which characterises 
the real Liberal. This state of mind involves a 
struggle, as we have seen. But we shall not be 
far from the mark if we make a fervour for education 
the canon of true Liberalism. 

In 1892 — the year after the passing of the 
Education Bill — came a dissolution, and the country 
returned Mr. Gladstone to power with a majority 
of forty — a superiority small, but sufficient. The 
Party was pledged to the hilt to bring in Home 
Rule, and accordingly the Session of 1893 saw a 
Home Rule Bill once again before the Commons. 
After long delays, it reached the Upper House, 
and was rejected by an enormous majority. An 
urgent whip had been sent round. Juvenile 
peers, whose laborious boyhood had been passed 
in anything but the study of great political problems, 
came from long distances to vote against a Bill they 



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266 The Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

had not read. The labours of a whole session were 
thrown away. It must be a delicate matter for out- 
siders to pronounce definitely as to what the Ministry 
should have done at this moment. But, surely, a 
dissolution would have been the best as well as the 
boldest course. The Ministry had then a real cry 
with which to go to the country. It had loyally 
fulfilled its pledges. The House of Lords stood in 
the way — the country should settle the question 
between them. Never again did the Liberal Govern- 
ment possess a programme so clear and explicit. 
Never again were they able to ask from the 
country a verdict on facts so easy of compre- 
hension. They might have been beaten, but it 
would have been an honourable defeat giving 
earnest of future victory. It would not have been 
the disaster of 1895. But the Ministry refused to face 
the responsibility of another General Election within 
fifteen months. The position must have been one of 
great difficulty. Doubtless the rank and file of the 
Liberal members were strongly against a dissolution. 
Yet it would have been the more honest 'course to 
pursue. As it was, the Ministry dragged on a 
humiliating if not ineffectual existence, and was 
dismissed by a chance vote on a side-issue. 

Its latter days were passed in struggling with 
great difficulties. The man who had led Liberalism 
for nearly thirty years retired from active life into 
the strenuous ease which is his idleness. Mr. Glad- 



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Mr. Gladstone. 267 

stone at last determined to live for the future in the 
intimacy of his great equals of the past Politics 
knew him no more. This loss to Liberalism it is 
impossible adequately to measure. Nor can we at 
this moment attempt any final judgment on what he 
has done for Liberalism. Only we can say, that of 
all the great statesmen of England there is not one 
who has accomplished as much as he in destroying 
unjust privileges, in establishing for the people their 
just rights. Can we say more ? Is it possible for a 
ruler of men to leave behind him a nobler or greater 
record than this? Perhaps it is only now that the 
leader is gone that we can see how commanding a 
place he held in the life of the nation, and how great a 
loss the cause of progress has suffered from his 
retirement. At any rate, the absence of Mr. Glad- 
stone was one of the reasons of the defeat of 1895. 
The other causes must be reviewed at some length. 
Their analysis, if correctly made, should contain the 
future fortunes of Liberalism. 

It will be readily admitted that the fall of the 
Liberal party in 1895 was an almost unprecedented 
fact in our political history. We can scarcely call to 
mind any defeat at the polls so overwhelming. If 
Liberalism is to regain the hold which it had on the 
country in 1880, it can only be by constant struggle 
and effort, and by pondering most carefully over the 
causes of the recent disaster. 

One cause of the Liberal defeat is that a large 



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268 The Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

section of the working classes had lost confidence in 
the future and gratitude to the past of the Liberal 
party. Their leaders, from whom they have taken 
their political complexion, no longer believe Liberals 
sincere in advocating the rights of labour. " Liberal- 
ism," they say, *' is controlled ' by a gang of 
capitalists. The rank and file may be sincere, 
but the Whig section still controls the councils. 
With all their professions of democratic sentiment. 
Liberals do not intend to do anything for the 
working classes. Some other body must be formed 
which can and will work for them. Liberals have 
played with Collectivism ; we will push it forward 
in real earnest." 

The latter portion of this indictment is true, and 
forms a second and important element in the defeat. 
Some Liberals have played with Collectivism ; they 
have encouraged it, and have given half promises to 
work in its direction ; they have expressed a dis- 
belief in the institution of property. One or two 
prominent members of the party are Collectivists 
through and through; at any rate, they join Tory 
democrats in applauding every proposal which tends 
towards that end. Certain sound Liberals of mediocre 
capacity, as well as many Collectivist agitators, have 
completely bf oken with the party. The latter are often 
worthy zealots, impatient of injustice, and keenly eager 
for the material well-being of the workers. They 
cannot understand why Liberals will not swallow the 



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Socialism in i8ps- 269 

whole doctrine and write "Socialism" on their banners. 
From their own point of view nothing could be more 
natural. What aspect does the Liberal party present 
to tAem ? It is a mass of cliques without a rallying 
word in common. It has no leader ; it is not homo- 
geneous. No man can tell what was the policy of 
the party at the last General Election. One man 
cried for Local Option, and another wished to end 
the Lords. A few put Home Rule first. No one 
agreed with his neighbour. To all these discordant 
demands the workers displayed a profound indif- 
ference. They had not been taught the full meaning 
of these measures, and the little information they 
possessed too often came through the misleading 
channel of Tory oratory. Perhaps it was the penalty 
the party was paying for not having dissolved on 
the Irish Question in 1893. In any case, the morale 
of the party was gone. Against this divided mass 
were arrayed both the solid hosts of Tory prejudice 
and the fiery, and often unscrupulous, opposition of 
the Independent Labour Party. The Liberals went 
down. They would not speak out; their attitude 
seemed mean and timid. The Collectivists declared 
that they had no reason for existence. 

Here, then, is the explanation of the discredit 
which has fallen upon us. But where is the remedy.? 

The remedy is simply this. Liberalism must once 
again base its claims on broad, abstract, moral lines. 
Its measures aim to fulfil great moral ideas, not merely 



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a/o The Historic Basis of Libbrausm. 

to confer small material gains. In the days of Bright 
and Cobden, Liberalism appealed to great abstract 
conceptions. It was fighting for rights which should 
belong to every man. Its aim was to make each man 
a worthier citizen by giving him the capacity for 
citizenship. If there was privilege, the Liberals 
attacked it; if there was injustice, they strove to 
abolish it They fought for material good to the 
workers, but their struggle was based on higher con- 
siderations than shillings and pence. The Anti-Corn 
Law agitation was no materialist crusade ; it was 
animated by higher motives. Their philosophy was 
human equality ; their battle cry, freedom. Though 
they would have rejected the title, they were certainly 
the heirs of the French Revolution, doing for their 
country what the Convention had done for France. 
And, like the Revolutionaries, they were amazingly 
successful because their principles were simple and 
lofty and their aims were above merely material con- 
cerns. No creed can conquer which does not appeal 
to higher motives than the desire for comfort And 
the Liberals of the past won a great victory, fighting 
against great odds. 

But of late years an entire change has come over 
the tone of our thought The philosopher notes a 
reaction from the Liberalism of '48. He sees that 
the force of these ideas has waned, or at best lies 
dormant. The wave of reaction has run strong. It 
has flooded the platform and the polling booth. 



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A Materialist Reaction. 271 

Everywhere we find men addressing themselves to 
the political problem in a totally different way from 
that of the past Yet behind these superficial appear- 
ances there remains, throughout the country, true 
Liberal feeling in strong and even overwhelming fgrce. 
The first question the reformer of to-day asks is, 
" How will this affect our pockets ? How will 
the worker and the unprivileged be benefited 
pecuniarily by such-and-such a change ? " To speak 
to such a man of liberty, of justice, is to talk 
to closed ears. He stands on different ground, 
and events reach him through a different medium. 
He is purely concerned with the material aspects of 
the case. Thus we find that each problem as it arises 
is dealt with on thoroughly unideal lines. Take the 
question of Land Nationalisation. The argument in 
favour of this thesis will be as follows : " The land 
originally belonged to the whole people " — a proposi- 
tion, by the way, which will not stand a moment's 
examination, but let it pass ; '' it has been appropriated 
by a dominant class few in numbers. It must be 
again put into the hands of the community, that 
everyone may profit by it alike, that the rent may 
go to the payment of national burdens. Thus the 
cultivator will be paying rent not to one individual, a 
member of a class pre-eminent in selfishness, but to 
the whole people, partly therefore to himself. Ergo, 
he will certainly benefit, and his struggle for a living 
will be easier." This is no unfair statement of the 



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272 The Historic Basis op Libbrausm, 

case for Land Nationalisation as presented by the 
CoIIectivist 

Now, how ought this matter to be approached ? 
Obviously the first question to be asked is not " Will 
the national comfort be increased ? " but — " How 
will it affect the liberty of the individual?" Land 
Nationalisation would, we hold, set up a despotism 
as searching and far more destructive of thrift than 
even that of the squirearchy at its worst. And if such 
a despotism would result, then Land Nationalisation 
must be avoided as we would avoid poison. But an 
argument based on national character seems value- 
less to most political thinkers of the present day. It 
is not theirs to discuss abstract propositions concern- 
ing liberty and the like. Provided their schemes have 
a plausible air of affording greater ease and comfort 
to a numerical majority, they are oblivious of any 
higher question. They, at least, will do their little 
best towards making the "City of Pigs" a reality 
at last* 

I have taken but one specimen to show this atti- 
tude of mind. Instances could be multiplied. But 
as I do not wish to trench on subjects which are 
dealt with elsewhere, I shall return to the historical 
application. The Liberal party has been beaten 
because it has attempted to meet the CoIIectivist on 
his own ground — because it has tried to compete 
with him in materialist programmes and promises 
1 Plato : ''Republic," Book ii. 



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False Ideals. 273 

of increased comfort. It must return to its earlier, 
better ideal. It must take its stand on the moral 
grounds of liberty and justice. It must teach the 
individual his duties as a citizen, and material pros- 
perity will follow. Stimulate his intelligence, his 
thrift, his patriotism, and he will take good care to 
improve his surroundings. To that end the machinery 
of local self-government has been provided. 

It is shown elsewhere what are the economic con- 
ditions which we would wish to bring about. I need 
not speak here of the moral benefits of small holdings 
and profit-sharing. All I am concerned to point out 
is that with Socialism there can be no capitulation, 
no compromise. We must not coquet with it in the 
future as we have done in the past We can see that 
it holds out a false ideal — an ideal which would lead 
to despotism, if not to national bankruptcy. Its 
watchwords, its philosophy, run counter to all the 
great ideas of the past. It is debauching the workers 
with low ambitions ; it is depriving them of belief in 
themselves. As we believe it to be leading men in 
wrong paths and towards an end profoundly false, we 
will combat it as resolutely as we did the Tory oli- 
garchy with its Socialism in the past* 

But the mistakes of less than a decade ought not 

to be allowed to weigh against a century's successful 

battle for the downtrodden and the oppressed. 

Liberal ideas have carried the workers out of the 

iv. pp. 235, 236. 

S 



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274 The Historic Basis of Liberalism. 

frightful misery and ignorance which was their lot 
under the Toryism of seventy years ago ; they will be 
their mainstay in the future. The work is but half 
done. The House of Lords clamours for the knife 
of reform ; the hereditary principle everywhere 
cankers the social life of England. The franchise is 
still restricted, and so manipulated that every obstacle 
is put in the way of the labourer obtaining the 
vote which is his. The Land Laws are more than 
mediaeval in their complexity, and they bear the 
impress of the privileged class which made them. 
In the registration of land, as of voters, l^al 
expenses are preposterous. There is Home Rule, 
which must be given, and the wrongs of centuries to 
Ireland which are only half alleviated. There are a 
thousand remnants of injustice which Liberalism 
must grapple with and overthrow. There are in- 
tellects as clear and as virile as of old, ready for the 
struggle. But our leaders keep silence, and believers 
in Liberalism remain perplexed. Until someone 
speaks out and impeaches the evils which are patent to 
all men, the Liberal party must remain a vacillating 
and incongruous body. Time presses, and time is of, 
priceless value. The opportunity may easily be lost. 
Until one of our leaders has the courage to fling away 
the scabbard and commence the attack, the rank and 
file must be confined to semi-idleness. We have been 
without a leader long enough, and we ask for a man 
with a clear head and unshaken faith to give the word. 



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The Heritage which is to be. 275 

We have dealt at much length with the historical 
basis upon which Liberalism rests, the needs which 
created it, its record in the past, its blunders in the 
present, its hopes for the future* We can see how it 
has raised the people, given them power and under- 
standing; how it swept away abuses and increased 
national wealth and national prosperity. But its 
principles are not of one time or age. It has taken a 
certain very distinct colour from the special circum- 
stances of England in the nineteenth century. Yet 
the root idea is eternal. Wherever there is inequality, 
wherever there is unjust privilege, wherever men are 
chattels rather than citizens, there will be Liberalism 
and Liberals fighting to redress the balance. To 
hold its creed demands constant effort, constant 
struggle. But the creed is well worth the fight, for 
its name is Liberty. 

Philip James Macdonell. 



s 2 



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INDEX. 



Acland's, Mr., circular, iSin 

Adams, Mr. Francis, quoted, 179 

Afghanistan, 254 

Afirica, South, 155-7 

Age-limit in elementary schools, 

206 
Agricultural distress, Mr. Chaplin's 

view of, 67 
Agricultural labourer under Protec- 
tion, 47-8, 235-6, 240-1 
Agricultursd School established by 

Cheshire County Council, 209 
Agriculture, Basis of reforms for, 

22, 28, 209; not ruined by 

Com Law Repeal, 40. {See 

Land.) 
Alford, Dean, quoted on Education, 

184M 
Alien Immigration Bill, 33^ 
Allotments to follow Free Trade in 

Land, 68 
America, United States of, 160 
Animals Diseases Act, 33^ 
Arbitration, 160 
Arch, Mr. Joseph, 252 
Aristocracy, The Territorial, 25, 229 
"Aristotle according to Stewart," 

S6n; quoted, 119 
Annenian agitation, 139 



Army, Purchase in, abolished by 
Gladstone, 247 

Arnold, Matthew, on higher educa- 
tion, 191 

Ashmead-Bartlett, Sir E., 253 

Asquith, Mr., quoted, 43*4, 12 if, 
i22n; his Employers' liability 
Bill, 112, iigseg. 

Athleticism and Patriotism, 145-6 

Austria, 167 



B 



Balfour, Mr., 109, 112, 121, 126; 
on threat of School Board, 197 

Ball, Mr. Sidney, 72 

Ballot Act, 247 

Beaconsfield. {See Disraeli.) 

Bentham, 231, 235 ; the Benthamite 
maxim, 66 

Berlin, Treaty of, 244-5 

Birmingham, Mr. Chamberlain and, 
8111, 83 

Blomfield's, Bishop, attack on Edu- 
cation Bill of 1839, 181 

Board schools compared with 
• Voluntary schools, in grant 
earned, 190 ; teachers' salaries, 
199 and nofe; extensive curri- 
culum of, 190 ; in villages, 195 ; 
Lord Cranbome's attack onr 



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278 



Essays in Liber ausm. 



London School Board, 187 ; 
Lord Salisbury on rates for, 
186; on salaries in, 187; his 
advice to "capture," 194, cf, 
20511; ^1^* Balfour on, 197; mis- 
chievous attempts to fetter, 189, 
195; religious instruction in, 
199 ; Tory treatment of, 197 

Boers, 155 

Bomba, King, denounced by Mr. 
Gladstone, 245 

Boroughs, Rotten, 223 

Bowley, Mr. A. L., on Wage 
Statistics, 51-3 

Bradlaugh, Charles, quoted, 124 

Braxfield, Lord, 228 and note 

Bright, John, 9, 238-9, 270 ; quoted, 
68, 69», 239 

Brougham, Lord, 9 

Bryanism, 87 

Brunner, Mond&Co., Messrs., 207 

Bulgaria, 16 

Burke, Edmund, 227-^ 



Canada, Free Trade in, 46^ 

Capital, Distribution of. {See Dis- 
tribution.) 

"Capture the Board Schools," 
194-5, 205» 

Carlyle, Thomas, on Com Laws, 
43 ; on Education, 184^ 

Catholic schools, 179, 19811 

Chamberlain, Mr., 126 ; as Mayor 
of Birmingham, 8ii{, 83 

Chaplin's, Mr., view of agricultural 
distress, 67 

Charter Schools, I79« 



Chartists, Demands of, 236-7 

Cheshire County Council's Agricul- 
tural School, 209 

Chonler's, BCr., suggestion, 49 

Christian Socialists, 61 and rwtt 

Church, The, in last century, 223-4 

Church Schools. {See Voluntary 
Schools.) 

Churchill, Lord R., Mistaken pro- 
phecy of, 25911 

Citizen, The Liberal, i, 6-9 

Citizenship, Idea of, 155 

" City of Pigs " the Socialist ideal, 
272 

Cobbett, William, 9, 19, 231 

Cobden, Richard, 9, 238-9, 270; 
and Manchester, 74-6; on 
State Education, 17811, 182 

Collectivism, 56-7, 71, 115, 262; 
an attack on thrift, 4-5 ; 
Liberals and, 99-101, 268, 
272; Mr. Gladstone on, x 
(pre&ce) ; why popular, 6 

Colonies, British, 152; how to 
retain them, 153 

Common Employment, Doctrine of, 
120 

Commons, House of. {See House.) 

Competition, Foreign, 208, 212 ; 
German, 44<-7 ; under Social- 
ism, 72 ; in agricultural pro- 
ducts, 66, 67 

Compromise, English habit of, 
132-3 ; in what sense involved 
in Liberalism, 118 ; not to be 
a main principle, 2, 203 

Compromise of 1870, Illogical, 205. 
\See Education, Forster.) 

Conscience Clause, The, 20i» 

Conscription, 159 



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Index. 



279 



Conservatism, Revolutionary, 134 ; 

victory of, in 1874, 247-8. 

{Set General Election, Tory.) 
Constitution established in 1688, 

219-20 
Continental competition, 208 
Continental Liberalism, 16 
Continuity in foreign policy, 134, 

162 
Contracting-out, 112-3, 121 
Conveyancing, 24 
Co-operation, 95, 2I2» 
Com Laws, 9 ; Carlyle on, 43 ; 

agitation against, 237-41 ; 

effect of repeal on agriculture, 

40 
Cosmopolitanism, 172 
County Councils and Technical 

Education, 207-9 
County Franchise, 221, 251 
Cowper*s ** Winter Evening " 

quoted, 48 
Cranbome, Lord, attacks London 

School Board, 187 
Crime diminished ,by Education, 

statistics, 193-4 
Crimean War, 245 
Cunningham, Professor, quoted, 

38 
Cyprus, 254 



Davies's, Rev. J. Llewellyn, letter, 

200lf 

De Tocqueville, "Recollections of," 

quoted, 63-5 
Delay, Dangers of, in Irish reform, 

22 



Democracies, Affinities of, to one 
another, 165 

Democracy, Tory, Idea of, 250 

Democratising of foreign policy, 
138-41 

Denmark, Agricultural education in, 
209, 210 

Denominational education. Sug- 
gested scheme for national, 
204-5. (^^^^ Education.) 

Devonshire, Duke of, quoted, 126-7, 

153, 197 

Discipline party. Need of, 14, 94, 

104, 161, 163, 269 
Disraeli, 241, 248-9, 251-6; his 

Orientalism, 138 
Distribution of wealth, 15, 50, 53, 

66, 261-3. 



Economic causes. Unconscious ac- 
tion of, 23 
Economic waste. Doctrine of, 69 
Economists traditionally Liberals, 

31,32 

Education a condition of freedom, 
177, 215 ; economic reasons 
for public, 69, 206 ; diminishes 
crime, 193-4 ; in Ireland, 
202; on the Continent, 184^, 
191 ; diminishes pauperism, 
193 ; must be electively con- 
trolled, 192 ; necessary for 
national welfare, 184-6, 195, 
216 ; proposal to limit cost of, 
188, 192 

Education Department, Creation 
of, 178 ; and evening schools, 
206-7; opposed by House of 



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28o 



Essays in Liberausm. 



Lords, i8o ; snpervision by, 

303» 

Education, Higher, Matthew Arnold 
on, 191 ; Report of Commis- 
sion on, 191 

Educational proposals alwaysfollow 
extension of franchise, 178 ; 
Mr. Forster's Act (1870), 178, 
181-2, 184, 189, 247-8; BiU 
of Mr. Whitbread (1807), 179, 
180 ; of Lord John Russell 
(1839), 180-1; of Mr. Fox 
(1850), 181; of Mr. Lowe 
(1861), 181 ; of 1896, 187-8, 
205-6, 214 ; Lord Sandon's 
Act (1876), i8iif 

Egypt, 148 

Eight Hours Day, 103 

" Empire," Meaning of, 1 51-2 

Employers' liability, 119 stq, 

England, why unpopular abroad, 
147-8 

Entail, 26, 66-7 

Equality of opportunity, loi, 109- 
10, 114, 122-3 

Ethical versus Economic Standpoint, 
69-70, 115 

Evening schools, 206-7 

Evolution, 60 

F 

Fabian Essays, 71, 72; syllogism, 

tfm\ Tract quoted, 5i« 
Factory Acts, 69, 103, 117, 123 
Federation, Imperial, 68, 152, 153 
Financial Relations Commission, 

I53»» 154 
Forster, W. E., his Education Act, 
178, 181 



Fox, Charles James, 9, 227 
Fox's Education Bill (1850), 181 
France, 16, 137, 152, 162, 165 
Franchise, ii, 15, 178, 237 
Free choice secured by legislation, 

II4, 123 
Free Education Act of 1891, 178, 

182-311, 264, 265 
Freemen, Corrupt, 74, 75 
Free Trade. (See Protection.) 
Free Trade and distribution of 
capital, IS; in land, 19, 65, 67, 
68 ; a political axiom, 33-5 ; 
Lord Salisbury on, 36, 37 ; 
recent success in the Colonies, 
4611 ; history of, 237-41 ; effect 
of, 261 
French Revolution, effects on Eng- 
land, 226-^, 270 



General Election of 1895, Causes of 
reaction at, 62-3, 105-6 

George IV., 229 

Germany (Prussian), 138, 167; 
Emperor cf, 168 

German competition, 44-7 

Gladstone, Mr., 92, 242-6, 248, 
265, 267 ; his words on Col- 
lectivism, preface x ; speeches 
of, in 1879, 140; and Italy, 
149 ; and France, 165 ; and 
Irish Home Rule, 258-60; 
his retirement, 266 

Gordon, General, 257 

Gorst, Sir John, quoted, 179, 188-9, 
214 ; referral to, 197 



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Index. 



28t 



Graduated Income Tax, 87-9 

Graham, Sir James, 58 

Grant, Government, to elementary 

schools, 19CM 
Grote, George, 235 



H 

Harcourt, Sir William, 106 ; his 
Budget, 79 

Hartington, Lord, quoted, 126 

Higher Education. (5>« Education.) 

Higher Grade Schools indispens- 
able, 191 

Home Rule, 10, 12, 104, 153-4, 
216,258-61, 274; not a sacri- 
fice, 259 and note ; first Home 
Rule Bill, 258 ; second, 265 ; 
and House of Lords, see be- 
low 

Hooley, Mr., 89 and note 

Hours of labour, Limitation of, 1 10 

House of Commons aristocratic in 
1 8th century, 220 and note, 221 

House of Lords an anachronism, 
66 ; and Home Rule, 12-14, 
265-6 ; and Irish land, 13 ; 
need of reform of, 216, 274; 
opposed Education Depart- 
ment, 180 ; rejected Mr. 
Whitbread's Bill, 180; right 
to pose as Referendum, 13 

Houses of Parliament, Composition 
of, 220 

Hugo, Victor, on education and 
crime, 194 

Hungarian independence, 10, 16, 
244 



Ideals, Moral, in Liberalism, 269- 

70 
Idealism, Political, 14, 17 
Imperial Parliament, Duties of, 68 
Imperial instinct, 60 ; vulgar forms 

of, 150-2 
Independent Labour Party, 269 
Individual character prior to that 

of State, 18 
Individual freedom in industry, 67, 

108-9 
Industrial ideals, 29, 95 
Industrial reform, Twin tendencies 

in, 107-9, iiS 
Industry regulated by law, ill 
Ireland, 22, 153-5 (and see Home 

Rule); elementary education 

in, 202 ; past injustice to, 242 
Irish Church, 246-7 
Irish Land Bill, Lords and, 13 ; 

Gladstone and, 256-7 
Irish Party. {See Nationalist Party. ) 
Interest as motive of policy, 149 
International morality, 1 4 1- 2 
Italian unity, 10, 16, 141/1 
Italy, friendship with England, 

149, I50» 168, 244 



Jameson's raid, 154-7 

Jingoism, Analysis of, 142-5 ; dis- 
tinguished from patriotism, 
144-6; how to supplant, 147, 
171 ; like Socialism, 5 ; origin 
of the nickname, 143^ ; why 
so popular, 4-6, 144 



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282 



Essays in Liberalism. 



Keir Hardie, Mr., 73, 103, 116 
Kidd's Mr., "Social Evolution," 

59ii 
Knox, John, 18611 



Local Government achieved by 

liberals, 15, 74-6, 263-4 
Local Veto Bill, 105-6 
London County Council, S4, 264 
Lowe, Robert, 181 
Lubbock, Sir John, quoted, 192-3 



M 



Labour Party, The, 98, 99, 268 

Labour Questions, two points of 
view, 69, 70, 115; present 
prominence of, 261 

Laissez-faire^ 82 

Land. {See Agriculture, Entail, 
Protection.) 

Land and citizenship, 22-3 

Land Laws, Reform of the, 26-8, 
65-8, 126, 216, 274 

Land Monopoly, 18, 24, 66, 79 

Land Nationalisation, 271-2 

Land Values, Taxation of, 80 ; con- 
fiscation of, by a Christian 
Socialist, 61 » 

Iiandlordism, 24 

Lecky, Mr., quoted on Charter 
Schools, I79if 

Liberal defeat of 1895, Causes of, 
62-3, 163, 267-9 

Liberal Ministry of 1880-5, 256-7 ; 
1892-5, 265-7; policy for 
Labour, 125; sympathy with 
national movements, 9, 10, 
151-7 

Liberalism on the Continent, 16; 
and Socialism, 69 {see Social- 
ism) ; moral ideals in, 269-70 

Liverpool School Board, 190 



Made in Germany, 44-7 

Manchester, Charter of Incorpora- 
tion, 75 

Manchester school, Attacks on, 33, 
70, 94, 98, 262; work of, 
241 

Materialism in Politics, 132-5, 224, 
270-1 

"Merrie England," 58 

Middleman in Politics, 54, 94 

Militarism, 159-60 

Mill, J. S., quoted, 109-10, i82» 

Mill, James, 231-2, 235 

Missouri, Member for, quoted, 39^ 

Monopoly in land, 11, 24; arti- 
ficial, how it raises prices, 
56-7, 236 ; artificial, theory 
of, 72, 78-86 ; natural, theory 
of, 72, 78-86 ; in U.S.A., 
87-8 ; of education, effects of, 
179-80 

Morality, International, 14 1-2 

Morley, John, quoted, 188, 259M ; 
on prophecy, I5I»; his "Life 
of Cobden " quoted, 58, 75, 
no, III 

Municipal legislation, 76, 222, 236 ; 
Liberalism, 77, 78 ; ownership, 
. 73. (Set Monopolies.) 



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Index. 



283 



N 

Napoleon III., 16, 253 , 
National schools, I99», 200 
Nationalist Party in 1885, 258-9; 

praise due to, 260 
Nationality a principle, 15 1-8 
Newspapers, foreign news incom- 
petent, 136-7 
Nonconformist grievance against 
Church schools, 182, 200-1 



Obscurantism, Official, in foreign 

policy, 134-5, 14^ 161 
One man one vote, 1 1, 237 
Opportunism, 34, 102, 118 
Optimism of Averages, 44 
Organic unity of the State, 60 



Palmerston, Lord, 149 ; policy of, 

243-5 
Pan- Anglican Empire, 150, 151 
Paradox in industrial policy, no, 

121 
Particularism in Foreign Policy, 

163, 165, 269 
Party Discipline, 14,94, IQ4, 161, 

163 

Pauperism limited by education, 

193 
Paupers, Manufacture of, 225, 226 
** Peace with Honour," 254-5 
Peasant-Proprietors, 165. {See Yeo- 
men.) 



Peel, Sir Robert, 241, 243 
Penrh3m Quarries dispute, 128 
Pessimism of exceptions, 44-7 
Petty, Prophecy of, I5i» 
Pharisaism, English, 147, 156 
Piers the Plowman, 17 
Plato on Education referred to, 

179, 272 
Playfair, Lord, on Education, 186 
Plunkett's, Mr., Report of Recess 

Committee, 209, 210, 2i3#f 
Pollock, Sir Frederick, 27 
Poor Laws, Reformed, 235; So- 
cialistic before 1834, 236 
Poor-rate limited by Education, 

193 

Population, 151 and note 

Pressens^, M. de, quoted in foot- 
note, 159 

Prices and Wages, 41, 42; raised 
by Artificial Monopoly, 56-7 

Priestley v. Fowler, I22« 

Principle essential to Liberals, 107, 
269-70 

Production, Divorce of personality 
from, 5 ; personality and, 29 

Progressivism,True and false, 53-4, 
86 

Property a badge of fraternity, 

6s 

Prophecy, Numerical Futility of, 

150, 151 
Protection, American view of, 39 ; 
and Rents, 40 ; involves ** a 
truth," according to Lord Salis- 
bury, 40 ; Lord Salisbury on, 
36 ; Quack remedy for depres- 
sion, 208 ; recent popularity of, 
35-43 ; Sydney Smith on, 38, 
39. (^^^ Free Trade.) 



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284 



Essays in Liberalism, 



Protectionist philanthropy, 57-9 
Pablic Institutions, Private adminis- 
tration of, 203 



Railway Servants' Hours Act, 

103 
Raleigh, Elementary politics, 

33Ili 

Ratepayers and Education, 187, 

189,197 

Reform Bill, First, Men of, 8, 9, 17, 
230-2, 234-5 ; history of, 232, 
299 ; Second, 245, 246 

Reform followed by Education Bills, 

178 

Registration of land, 26-8, 274 

Religious teaching in elementary 
schools, 196, 199, 204 ; secured 
by a new scheme, 204 

Representation and taxation, 89 

Revolution, Non-interference with, 
166 ; of 1848, 241-2 ; of 1688 
establishes constitution, 219 

Rhodes, Mr. Cecil, 156 

Richards, Rev. W. J. B., on Con- 
science Clause, 20iif 

Roebuck, Mr., on value of edu- 
cation, 194M 

Rosebery, Lord, quoted, 103, 163 ; 
and London County Council, 

84 

Russell, Lord John, 171, 231, 234, 
245-6 ; educational purposes 
(1839), 1 80-1 ; proposes State 
Training College, 199^ 

Russia, Traditional view of, 138, 
166-7, 255 



Salisbury, Lord, in office, 37 ; on 
Board school rates, 186 ; on 
capturing the Board schools, 
194 ; on hops, 36 ; on impos- 
sibility of Protection, 36 ; on 
teachers' salaries, 187 ; on the 
** truth" in Protection, 40; 
on the "wrong horse," 255 ; 
on trades unions, 128 

San Stefano, Treaty of, 254 

Sandon, Lord, and educational 
grant, i%in 

School Boards, Difficulty of obtain- 
ing, 196-7. {See Board schools.) 

Scotland, Elementary education in, 
I96» 

Secondary Education Commission, 
2I3», 214 

Shibboleths, Political, 169-70 

Shipbuilding, Statistics of, 44-5 

Small holdings, 23 

"Social" takes place of "politi- 
cal," 261 

Socialism, 262; compared with 
Jingoism, 5 ; false ideals of, 
271-3 ; in election of 1895, 
267-9 ; in France, 63-4 ; Tory, 
235-6, 273 ; vagueness of the 
term, 61, 1 11, 170 

Socialist, Chrbtian, 61 and note; 
equivalent to "member of 
Society," 61 

Socialists turning Liberal, 94 

Soil, Demand for the, 22 

Specialisation in politics, 104 

Speenham Land Act, 225 ; abolished, 

235 
Stambuloff, 16 



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Index. 



285 



State, Liberal conception of, 175-6; 

individual character prior to, 

18 
Stevenson, R. L., 228» 
Stewart, Mr. J. A., stagirising 

Socialism, 86ff 
Switzerland, Technical education in, 

213 
Sydney Smith quoted, 38-9 



Taxation and representation, 89- 
91, 203 ; incidence of, 125, 216 

Technical education, 206-7, 212 ; 
in Denmark, 210; in Switzer- 
land, 213 

Temperance reform, 104-6, 127 

Terminology, Unmeaning change of, 
59-62 

Test Acts, 223, 224, 232 ; Univer- 
sity, 247 

Tests for teachers 204 

Thackeray and Snobs, 22911 

Tory legislation, Typical, 251 ; 
Democrat, 248, 250 

Toryism, why inefficient for Labour 
reform, 127-8 

Towns, Constitution of, in the i8th 
century, 222, 223; corruption 

in. 74-5 
Trades Unions, 262-3 
Tradition mechanical in Foreign 

PoUcy, 135, 138 
Training College, State, for teachers, 

I99« 
Trevelyan, Sir G. O., 251 
Turkey, English and Russian policy 

towards, 253-5 



U 

Unemployable, The, 55 
Universities in the i8th 

223, 224 



century. 



Venezuela, 160 

Veto {su Local) ; of House of 

Lords, 14 
Villiers, Mr. Charles, annual motion, 

58, 237 

Voluntary schools : Managers, 90, 
91 ; V. Board schools in grant 
for dass subjects, I90if ; policy, 
194 ; claims examined, 196-8 ; 
subscriptions, 197, 198; one 
thousand, without subscriptions, 
197 ; in what sense public, 201 ; 
teachers, extraneous duties, 
201 ; income, 202 

Vote, One man one, 11, 237 



W 

Wages, Tory theory that they 
follow prices, 41, 42 ; real and 
nominal rise in, 42 ; com- 
parison of (1770 to 1850), 47- 
50 ; comparison of (i860 to 
1891), 52-3 ; doubled in value 
in thirty- six years, 53 

Webb, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney, 
quoted, 113, I22» 

" Weir of Hermiston," 228« 

Wheat, Prices of, compared, 42 

Whiggism, 102, 268 

Whitbread's, Mr., Education Bill, 



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286 



Essays in Liber ausm. 



179; rejected by House of 

Loids, 180 
WiUiams, E. E., "Made in 

Germany/' 44-7 
Women's Saffirage,>Sw^iM^, 134 
Wrixon, Sir Henry, quoted, 87, 88, 

90 
Wurtembeig, aio-ii 



Yeoman of last century, 19, 221, 

222 ; of the future, 67 
Young, Arthur, on Wages, 50 



ZoUverein, 47 



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